What an idiot. I have struggled with buckling case mouths in trying to reload some light bullets - 350 grain Hawk made for me in a .474 diameter. Wanted a plinking/practice load. But the case is buckling about 8 times out of 10 as I try to seat the bullet.
Lacking a bullet puller in a 470 (as far as I can tell, they aren't made), I pretty well tear up the bullets everytime I try to salvage the case. Great, just great. Case mouth is slightly flared from the decapping die, so I couldn't figure this out. No problem with loading the big 500 grain Woodleigh bullets. Just not able to have a lighter load that's easier on both gun and shooter.

But ... tonight I was taking another look at the decapping die, and HAPPENED TO READ THE INSTRUCTIONS. It talked about chamfering the case mouth, which I always do on new cases, but these were once fired, and slightly flared from the decapping die. So I thought I shouldn't need to. WRONG.

Chamfering was the ticket that did the trick. No case buckling, loaded rounds chamber easily in the double rifle and life is good!!

What makes this interesting to me is that I've been reloading for 40 years plus, and still learning. Hope this sharing of my frustration and solution helps another member of this forum.

HT
Be sure and tell us how your 350gr load shoots. I helped a friend develop a 350 gr. Hawk load for his 470 and it shot and "regulated" even better than the 500grain loads. We used 75gr. of IMR 3031, with poly filler [5grains poly if I remember correctly, just make sure it is compressed] and Federal 215 pirmers.

Those 470 Cases co$t too much. I've only ruined one neck so far.

I don't chamfer my .470s and the bullets go in and crimp with ease...I had that same trouble with Hawk bullets, and Hawk blamed it on Bell brass as being the worst, which was just some of Hawks BS...A lot of Hawk bullets when measured are oversize..I'm always suspecious when a company blames another company for its mistakes, and after a talk with Huntingtons I found out this has happened before, and I have never had problems with Woodleighs, GS Custom, or Swift with the Bell brass or Norma, just Hawk. I have also had a lot of bullet failures with Hawk, so needless to say its not my favorite company...but they are a source for some early winchester bullets that otherwise would not be available, and thats a good thing.

I suggest seating bullets and crimping in 2 separate operations. It helps avoid case damage. You may also want to install a cannelure on the Hawk bullets to make crimping easier.

As long as we are on 470's here. My CH-4D dies won't go down far enough to crimp on my 500gn cast bullets without damaging the nose on the bullet. I've been thinking of trying to bore part of the threads out for clearance. Maybe I should just send it back to CH-4D, but I don't want to be without them for any amount of time. The do work to crimp the Barnes 500 XLC though.
thoughts?

Great, I'll do that.
Thanks.

I am haveing trouble with my C&H4D 470 dies and Dave is arguing with me as opposed to fixing them...He's right and everyone else is wrong, including Butch , Norma, Bell..The dies I have will not swatge the necks down enough to hold a bullet without a hard crimp...He swears his specs are right and the rest of the world is crazy...We'll see how it pans out, but I am getting a bit impatient..

You appearantly have better luck withs them than I do!

Ray,



That sounds VERY familiar. I have had similar experiences with CH4D. Personally, I think of them as the Bertram brass of reloading dies.



Mine did not crimp either!



ASS_CLOWN

Bob F,
I know I have a set of dies out of spec as they won't resize down enough to hold Woodleigh, GS Custom, Bridger or Swift without a hard crimp..I can pull them out by hand without the crimp, they jump out the case in the other barrel when I fire them...

Dave at C&H4d says Searcy, Norma, Bell and I suppose all the bullet makers are out of spec and thats not his fault and it may not be for all I know..I have sent him fired and loaded cases...He said that Norma should change the brass and acted like I should contact them!! Huntingtons wouldn't even discuss it and said Dave never has had a clue how to make a set of dies..

So now I am the poor bastard consumer in a war between all these companies, so I calls Dave one more time and he tells me to send the die back and he'll fix it for Norma and Bell brass and all I have to pay is a $50.00 set up fee and thats cheaper than me buying a set of RCBS dies..I told him that I wasn't going to pay a $50 set of fee for a set of dies I bought from him in good faith..He then killed any further negociation by telling me that he couldn't understand how someone who could afford to go to Africa every year couldn't afford a $50. set up fee, and he felt sorry for me so he would do it for nothing, hows that?...I told him No, I didn't want his sympathy and that I would just rather send the dies back, get a refund and call it even as I didn't appreciate his bull shit..He agree and hung up...

He was right about one thing, it will end up costing me more to get RCBS, and thats fine with me, I'd rather do business with a reputable outfit at twice the price....

I have bought dies from C&H over the years and they worked fine and I am sure most of his dies do, but you can sure tell something about a man by the way he handles a customer service complaint...

Speaking only for myself, I will never own another set of C&H4d dies...

I suppose all of us get up on the wrong side of the bed from time to time. Dave at CH4D has been very helpful to me in the past, so I would call my experience at CH4D positive.

I have RCBS 470 NE dies. They work fine and look fine.

I have CH4D 470 Mbogo dies. One of the dies has its threads cut so crudely that it will not easily screw all the way into the press as far as I would like. It is galling the bushing in my AmmoMaster press, but it is a bushing supplied free of charge by CH4D, so I get by. I have been meaning to take the dies and the bushing to a real machinist gunsmith and see if he can chase out the threads properly. Luckily the rest of the function of the dies is good.

There is no denying that the CH4D dies are crude compared to RCBS, Redding, Lyman, Hornady, Lee, ... did I leave out anybody?

I emailed them, but no responce yet.

Thanks Ray, for posting your troubles with CH4D dies. I've only had two sets of their product and each gave me the same problems as yours. I was about to call CH4D tomorrow and order and couple of sets of big bore dies plus some miscellaneous other stuff, mainly because they were considerably cheaper than the RCBS dies in the same caliber. I've now been reminded of the old adage, "You get what you pay for!" and will be calling Huntingtons for the RCBS products that have been my mainstay for the past 40 years (and any problems I had were resolved immediately).
........Guess both Huntingtons and RCBS are a lot more "customer oriented"! For $200 more, I'll save the $1200 I was going to send CH4D!
~Arctic~

Arctic,

I have seen the same issues Ray and RIP posted on CH4D dies. In short they suck, but they are better than nothing at (barely).

ASS_CLOWN

Ray,

Thanks for passing along your experiences with the CH4D .470 dies. While I haven't had a problem with the sizing of the cases, for bullet seating, I do have to keep the seating die very high off the shell holder (compared to the RCBS dies I use for all my other cartridges) in order to avoid crimping the cases while seating bullets. I'm talking about the bottom of the die having to be an inch or so off the shell holder. (I prefer to seat and crimp in two operations.) That's always bugged me. It's made me be suspicious of the construction of the dies. I just think the crimping "edge" in the die is too far down the body of the die. It just seems weird to me. Also, like others here have reported, I find the threads on the dies to be rather rough.

I think I'm just going to have to purchase the RCBS dies. As you know, they're expensive but they're only a little more than the price of one box of Federal .470 ammo! I guess I can justify the expense that way.

-Bob F.

Guys
With all the talk on this thread on the quality of the CH4D dies I thought I had better check mine out for the .470 NE as I hadn't tried them yet - still waiting for rifle!

The resizing die seems to work ok as the Woodleigh I seated was a nice tight fit..........but I got no set up instructions with the set so wanted to ask about the expander and seating dies and how best to set them up. ie how much of a flare does one need on the case mouth and how does one set the seating die to seat without crimping?

Thanks heaps for any info you guys can pass on.

GG

Flare or bell the case mouth as little as possible to start the bullet into the case easily. Less working of the brass will prevent neck/mouth splits and work hardening/ brittleness. Adjust the belling/flaring stem up and down to control this.

Keep the die above the shell holder about 0.1" or 2 to 3 mm while seating the bullet to proper depth. Then back off the seater stem or take it out of the top of the seating-crimping die altogether.

Then in the second stage of seating-crimping, the crimping stage, screw the die back down towards the shell holder until the crimping surface barely touches the brass when the press ram is fully up. Then gradually screw in the die until you have just enough crimp.

Once you have the die set here, you can seat and crimp in one throw of the press, but I prefer to do it in two stages.

RIP

Thanks mate.

So if I don't want to crimp, I just set up the die to be 2 or 3 mm clear of the shell holder at top of stroke and adjust seater for recommended OAL which is 3.86" from memory?

GG

Yep.