Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Express Rifles and Big Bores Only Slightly different topic for 416 Rigby shooters.

Hi Sojerguy, Remember, the only way to get your dies to seat true, is to bottom them out on the shell holder before you tighten down the locking nut. On my 416 Rigby seating die, this won't work, as the seater is shorter. I don't know about the RCBS seating die. It may pay in the long run to buy a generic Hornady New Dimension sleeve seating die. Then you can always run a buckled case back into your RCBS seater, which will have enough clearance for a crimped bullet, if you just back off the seating stem. This 416 caliber seems to have a balance between inline seating, and support for the shoulders. One gives wonderful accuracy, and the other gives super reliability. But if you get superb accuracy with the RCBS dies, why bother going further? I found some canadian Rigby cases which were really soft, compared to the Federal Rigbys. So you may have to shop around for the right cases to reload with your new die set. Some, but not all of these 416 cal. boomers, are wickedly accurate. If you can just hold them down.

Strangely enough, with all my specialty ammo, (22 K-hornet, 300 Whisper, 338-08 {had it made 3 years before the 33 Fed came along}, 9.3x74R, and the .375 HnH), I've always de-primed prior to resizing, use a Lyman "M" die for neck belling, and a Lee hand prime, all before charging the case.

This has given me excellent accuracy, consistent (to my mind a t least) bullet pull and piece of mind.

None of the above rounds listed above get shot up in the several hundred per week, so though this process is slower, it works for me.

I'll likley use the same procedures for my .416.

Lee makes a factory crimp die for the rigby but it has oversize 1-1/4x12 threads and only fits in their Classic Cast press. I would get the works if I shot my Rigby a lot. Here's a link:

http://leeprecision.com/416-rigby-custom-factory-crimp-die.html

Big Redhead,
Thanks for your post. last I checked I was to send them a dummy 416 rigby round to their custom shop and the would build me a Factory Crimp Die. I just never got around to it. After reading your post I ordered one!