Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Custom Rifles & Wildcats Custom Reloading Dies

I saw it noted on the Campfire sometime ago that Huntington's was not working anymore with RCBS to produce wildcat reloading dies.

I waited for a couple months and called Huntingtons and confirmed this bad news. RCBS just threw it all in the junk! They didn't even give give Huntingtons a chance to buy their tooling. This bothers me since I am the proud possessor of a wildcat chambering reamer and set of head space gages for caliber I was having Huntingtons produce dies for. I called Dave at C-H 4D. He does not even have my caliber on his list. I asked him about lead time for making dies. Dave said 18 months. This stinks. Again.... He doesn't think that it is worth growing his business. I am over 70, and he is at least that old. I met him in the mid 70's.

So now. Who all makes custom reloading dies. I know Hornady does,and I cannot remember their time line. I just saw Neil Jones of Custom Products at Kelbley's Range and the Super Shoot. He is old, and barely locomoting. I didn't even ask him about making dies. Will someone ever step up and furnish reloading dies for the rifle Looney? The Golden Age is over.

Let's produce a comprehensive list of the custom reloading die makers.

Hornady is who I've used several times for wildcat dies. Ben even recognizes my voice now. He named my last wildcat because I didn't have a name for it yet.
They also made bushing dies if you want.

I have a set of RCBS dies for a .338-280 Improved wildcat. The dies are stamped .338 Wolfe, but the engraving on the rifle's barrel says .338 RCBS. The rifle has a tight chamber, and both .280 and .30-06 brass were difficult to chamber after the full length resizing. So, I sent the dies to RCBS and asked them to confirm the dimensions. After a dozen or so back and forth emails and a couple of telephone conversations, they admitted that the dies did not match anything in their records and that they did not have any idea what the dies were for. It took about six weeks and a couple more phone calls to get the dies back from RCBS.

Next time I drove up to Albuquerque, I dropped the rifle and dies off with my gunsmith. A week or so later, he called me and said that the chamber matched the specifications in Ken Howell's book, but the sizing die was a couple of thousandths or so oversized. He suggested that rather than try to form .280 or .30-06 brass, that I just buy new .338-06 brass from Norma or Weatherby and fire form them in my chamber--and that's what I did. Most of the first 100 cases have been fired at least a couple of times, now, and everything is working well.

Custom die makers (to start the list, alpha order):

CH4D - http://www.ch4d.com/

Hornady - https://www.hornady.com/reloading/dies/custom-dies#!/

Redding - http://www.redding-reloading.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&Itemid=15&id=38%3Acustom-made-dies

Warner Tool Company - https://warner-tool.com/collections/reloading-dies

Whidden Gunworks - https://www.whiddengunworks.com/custom-reloading-dies/

Many gunsmiths will also make dies along with rifle builds - they may require a resize reamer (which you/they might not have).

Die blank sources (alpha order):

Newlon Precision - http://www.newlonprecision.com/ [shown thru 338 LM but they will produce larger on special order]

Wilson - https://lewilson.com/catalogsearch/result/index/?limit=36&q=die+blanks

Redding & L E Wilson have everything I need.