Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters GG #3

John, I reread your chapter on dies last while watching Shetland. There was so many nuances even reading it twice couldn't do justice to it. Thanks for you effort.

I enjoyed reading that book. Ordered GG IV this week from Eileen. Cannot wait to get that little reference book!

I re-read it again yesterday too! Necking up that 30-06 brass to 338-06 got me digging into more info about dies and concentricity.

Strange, that was just the thing that triggered a reread with me. Well, my numbers were better than yours, still, I wasn't too impressed with mine. I'm going to do some tune-up on my 338-06 die.While putting together a CH4D parts list for my 30-06 Frankendie , I noticed a tapered button. Redding also makes one. Have you tried it, yet.

Just got my Sinclair Mandrel and die holder in the mail a few minutes ago. I'll post results in the other thread later tonight.

The chapter on dies is great. I've read it several times and am going to make a real effort to tune up my dies and reloading processes so I get straighter ammunition coming out of the die and don't have to use the Tru Angle tool so much.

Glad you like the die chapter!

Other aspects of dies and forming cases mentioned elsewhere in the GG books. One is the Hornady Custom Grade dies I got for the .358 Winchester years ago. I was loading the .358 both for me and a friend who didn't handload, partly because .358 factory ammo was getting difficult to find--and then Winchester discontinued the 250-grain load he favored.

I first used a set of RCBS dies, but when .358 brass became difficult to find started necking-up .308 cases. This didn't work all that well with the RCBS die, for same reasons people have stated here. Found out Hornady used a very smooth and elongated expander ball in their Custom Grade dies--which might have been from one of the Hornady folks, perhaps at the SHOT Show. Got a set, and the sizer resulted in pretty darn straight brass with one pass-through of a .308 case.



Have also discussed the COW (Cream-of-Wheat) method of fire-forming--including necks--in at least a couple chapters in Gun Gack I. One involved forming cases for the .17 Hornady Hornet from .22 Hornet cases after Hornady's version appeared, and the other making 6.5 Creedmoor cases from .22-250s.

The 6.5 CM chapter first appeared in Handloader in 2010, when more hunters first started to "discover" the round. Some others became interested in buying a 6.5 CM, but were worried that it might fade away and cases would be hard to find.

That didn't happen, of course, but at the time I decided to see how easy it was for form 6.5 cases from widely available .22-250s--since the Creedmoor is essentially the 6.5/.250 Savage Improved. It turned out the easy-button was COW forming, which I did with part of my abundant supply of Winchester .22-250 brass--and the COW cases worked very well.

-Hornady for a while made a replacement stem for RCBS dies with their highly polished egg shaped button . It was only for a while, I didn't get that many changed over. I don't think it was a wise business decision on their part, better to sell the complete die sets.