I am going to be purchasing dies for the .376 Steyr and while researching it I found this on the SteyrScout.org website.



"A Warning About Hornady Dies

I have received several reports that the Hornady dies are cut short and that when screwed all the way down that they set the shoulder back too far causing case separations. I strongly suggest that you back these dies out one full turn, smoke the neck and shoulder of the cases, and then size and adjust the die down 1/8 turn at a time until the neck is resized without the shoulder being touched. Hornady is currently investigating this problem."


Hornady's chief engineer says there is no truth to this but I have seen some complaints of case separations here in the past.

Anyone know for sure?

That form of adjustment is somewhat crude.
Hornady makes a headspace checker that attaches to a dial caliper that can be used to sort out such problems.
It would only take measuring a few rounds from the rifle to compare the chamber to the resized cases from the die.

I am not sure why anyone would think dies might be engineered incorrectly theses days.

If you can send me 3 fired cases from your rifle I can measure them for you.

Based on the following I would check back to someone else at Hornady for potential problems with the rifle/ammo/die combination. Anyone or all 3 can cause problems and Hornady manufacturers 2 of the 3 items.



A quote see this page

My first attempts with reloading once-fired factory brass resulted in case head separations on every case. I e-mailed Hornady for technical assistance and got back a forwarded reply from Steve Hornady. He said that early runs of .376 Steyr ammo had excessive headspace, causing the separations. He also said that new unprimed cases would be available in the spring or summer of 2001, so I postponed further testing until I could get new brass.

Thanks for the offer but the rifle isn't built yet. I have everything, action, stock and barrel, sights and scope, just need to save up to have someone put it together.

I found someone selling older NIB Hornady dies for about 1/2 of current list and was wondering if the older ones had a problem but from the link you posted it sounds like the problem was the early ammo, not the dies.

quote:

Originally posted by Recoil Rob:
Thanks for the offer but the rifle isn't built yet. I have everything, action, stock and barrel, sights and scope, just need to save up to have someone put it together.

I found someone selling older NIB Hornady dies for about 1/2 of current list and was wondering if the older ones had a problem but from the link you posted it sounds like the problem was the early ammo, not the dies.

There are several threads around the net that seems to focus on the ammo as the problem.
If you have not built it yet you might get a box of current manufacture ammo and current dies and measure them compared to a headspace gauge. It is real easy to make chamber, ammo and dies match if you decide what you want up front.