You remind me about something with the Lee dies, sometimes I need to put the luck ring under the tool head. I buy the 1" Dillon nuts and use one of these:
https://www.lowes.com/pd/Kobalt-1-in...Wrench/3388704
You remind me about something with the Lee dies, sometimes I need to put the luck ring under the tool head. I buy the 1" Dillon nuts and use one of these:
https://www.lowes.com/pd/Kobalt-1-in...Wrench/3388704
Dillon claims their dies have more of an opening so it is less chance of the brass not seating in the die correctly. I have never used Dillon dies in my 550 so I can't claim that they do either way. I have used Hornady and Lee dies with no problems. I greatly prefer the Lee dies and use the factory crimp die on all my pistol calibers, it is amazeballs.
I use a universal decapping die by lee and knock out all my primers before I clean them on my rcbs turret press. When I start reloading I do everything else on the 550 other than decapping primers.
I have had to realign my 550 already and it was off by quite a bit. They will send you a gauge if you ask them to for free.
I was told that realignment is facilitated if the individual had four size dies in same caliber, say for example .38 Spl. Then 4 cases are run into dies and position is set. Some guys such as I have many extra dies from having bought or been gifted them over decades.
I generally feel like reloading is a waste of time, but, if I want to shoot, I need to reload.
So, that said, the less I have to fuss with bullshit on the press, the more time I can spend actually printing ammo.
Lee dies help me accomplish that:
1.) Less moving parts to break (that f'n "C"-clip on the resizing/decapping pin of the Dillon die... Ugh...)
2.) Lee decapping pin is such a great solution, especially when you hit some Berdan primed brass...
3.) Lee FCD smooths out your sins when in a hurry...
I do like my Redding seating die, tho... I've been known to swap a few different profiles and that makes it a snap.
If you cast your own bullets and size them to match the chamber throats (as you should) in a revolver you will want to rip the head off the mofo that designed the Factory Crimp Die.
I like the FCD for rifle use. Otherwise, I hates it.
Don’t blame me. I didn’t vote for that dumb bastard.
I cast my own. However, now that I don't have a Ruger with oversized chambers (.432 per my pin gauges), I don't need anything particularly "fat".
Back when I did, in order to see how much of an impact the FCD had on my bullets (boolits?), I ran some tests. I found that tight brass resized my bullets far more than the FCD did. The only time the FCD had any impact at all was with a fat bullet and thick wall brass. Even then, the effect was less than the brass itself.
I've heard you can use a hardened punch to shatter the carbide sizing ring in the FCD. I've also heard you can use the guts of one FCD in a larger FCD to crimp the caliber listed on the die the guts came from. I've tried neither trick.
Chris
You might also be able to just cut it off shorter. I have been expanding in a subsequent station (partially to simplify extraction of a potentially stuck case, partially to deburr the case mouth) using the Squirrel Daddy expanders in a Lee decap die. The decap die pins are longer than the expanders, so that makes the decap die too short for the decap die body, so I cut a couple of them off. I thought it would take my pneumatic cutoff wheel, but my battery reciprocating saw walked right through it. With a good blade I am sure you could do it with a sabre saw.