Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Long Range Hunting 6.5-284 Norma dies?

Another 6.5-284 question

I can get Redding competition (bushing) dies around here and would like to know whether I should rather go for a custom Lee collet die? Reason being the ease of adjustment and ease of use. I have not used the Redding dies before and was told that they are slightly trickier to set up. I am more than willing to go the Redding route if they will produce better ammo?

Should I look elsewhere than the above mentioned?

Thanks

Pieter

Personally, I see no reason to spend the extra coin on competition dies. I loaded all my 1K BR guns with regular Redding Type S full length bushing die and a Wilson inline bullet seater.

Bonanza or Lee collet dies work pretty well, especially for the price.

I don't think competition dies would perform any better. And they cost a lot more.

DF

I have 5 sets of 6.5-284 dies. My favorites by a large margin are the Forsters. Wilson inline dies are hard to beat for bullet seating but the FOresters are 99% as good.

Hornady seaters are a lot like the Forster Bonanza seater. I have Wilson seaters, in fact the 6.5-284 was reamed from a blank by my smith, using the same reamer he used for the rifle.

Using an Arbor press and Wilson seater is slower than the Hornady/Bonanza seater, not enough improvement to worry with, IMO.

DF

I'm not so impressed with the Hornady seater, finding the Forster and Redding "competition" seaters much better at producing consistently low runout.

Isn't the Hornady and Forster seater design very similar with the floating bullet guide?

DF

The Hornady design is "universal" so all the floating bullet guide parts try to align way out on the end of the case. You'd think that would be sufficient but I've not found it so in practice. If you're working with a long cartridge within the family the die is designed for then the die may wind up barely threaded into the press. That's another alignment killer, the die directions notwithstanding.

I ream my own sleeves with the same reamer that I chamber the rifle with. Sometimes they are better, sometimes they are no different from the stock sleeves. Most of our rifles are not intended to shoot 1/8" groups. Ammo only needs to be so good before you reach a point of diminishing or no returns on time and investment.

Forster holds their runnout on the BR dies to .00018" I believe.

combo from Forster & Redding......

Forster BR seater dies rock...........

Do not use the hornady seating die as they are junk