Has anyone ever set up a progressive press to form brass? This weekend I chambered up a 17 Remington and wanted to try resizing 223 and 204 brass for the chamber. I wanted to see where the 223 came out for OAL and neck thickness. I ended up using 3 different dies with a 222 Rem die to set the shoulder back, a 20 PPC die to size the neck down some more, and then finally the 17 Rem FL die. I think a 17 Rem seater die might be a good step before the FL die too.

So that would be a 4 die process and I was thinking a progressive press might be kind of handy if I could run them right down the line.

On another note, in setting up the dies to size properly, I used a 17 Rem headspace GO gage, put it in the shellholder, ran the ram up and screwed the sizing die down to contact plus a hair. It worked extremely well in setting up the shoulder and neck set-backs for all the dies. Don't know if I've ever read about it so thought I'd mention it as it was pretty slick.

If the progressive doesn't work, I may have to get a turret press as that would be almost as fast and convenient.

As for the 223 to 17 Rem, brass ended up at 1.768. With a 1.786 trim length on the 17 Rem case, I might be close after firing...we'll see.

Loaded neck diameter was .198 and my chamber reamer was an older Clymer with .202" neck so I SHOULD be good. This was with some General Dynamics 5.56mm new brass I picked up cheap somewhere.

That could definitely save some time to process a lot of brass. But how much 17 rem brass do you really need? Most of my wildcat forming is at most 200 pieces of brass, and I just use the single stage. With the single stage I also have good 'feel' so I can immediately tell if something is not going right. Also, the progressives will usually flex some, so once you get all the dies under forming load, your settings might be off. Shouldn't be a problem with necking down 223 though.

I was going to run a couple hundred to start with and I was just thinking of the PITA of running ever piece through 4 times each... I do like the idea of a turret press for this, but don't have one. I do have 4 single stage presses though and I suppose I could have a 'party' with a couple kids and a friend or two

my only concern would be having the lube rubbed off before finishing

That should not be an issue. Lube well the 1st time. If you are truly worried, Dillon makes a spray lube + you will never have to put hands on your rotary base plate +/or remove cases. The use of a rotary press is a major labor solver. One flick of the wrist advances to your next station in case forming.Whether 100 or 1000, time is always at a premium + worth the cost of the tools to make it so.

A little update on this, I picked up a 20 Vartarg body die for an intermediate die, and I can go from 223 Rem to 17 Rem in two dies... the Vartarg takes the shoulder back and neck down to 224 (outside diameter), and the 17 Rem FL die easily sizes the neck down to 17...only problem is instead of a case length of 1.768ish" the case ends up at 1.152". I was using the expander in the other intermediate die and I think that helps to retain length on the case during sizing operations.

quote:

Originally posted by matt salm:
A little update on this, I picked up a 20 Vartarg body die for an intermediate die, and I can go from 223 Rem to 17 Rem in two dies... the Vartarg takes the shoulder back and neck down to 224 (outside diameter), and the 17 Rem FL die easily sizes the neck down to 17... only problem is instead of a case length of 1.768ish" the case ends up at 1.152". I was using the expander in the other intermediate die and I think that helps to retain length on the case during sizing operations.

You what?
Make the case .6 inch shorter by sizing it?
I see a lot of turtleneck there!

X

My bad, fixed the typo. 1.752”