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Showing results for tags 'lee fcd'.
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All, Ok, I've been reading up a bunch on here on various reloading processes everyone is doing and finally realized that the Lee FCD everyone was talking about is a Factory Crimp Die and that it performs removing the bell (on 40 and 9mm) separately than the bullet seating die. When I bought my initial die set in .40, I bought the Hornady Nitride Custom Grade Die set (Hornady set# 546533). This set does NOT include a taper crimp die (that is set# 546534). It is just a three die set. Now, it is my understanding that this die set has one die that sizes and decaps, one die that bells and one die that seats and debells/crimps. The more I have read, it seems that a lot more people here seem to prefer to seat in one step and debell/crimp in a separate step. My question is...is it possible for me to just buy only the Lee FCD die separately and put it in another station and "modify" my current Hornady seating/crimping die to ONLY seat the bullet? Or am I stuck having to buy the full Lee 4-die set to be able to do all of this in separate steps? I know this is probably a super newbie question, but I wasn't sure if it was possible to unscrew/loosen or remove the crimping part of my Hornady seating/crimping die so that it will only seat the bullet and that is it. If so, then I don't see why I shouldn't be able to do that so that it only seats the bullet and then buy the Lee FCD die separately (probably way less than the $60 for the full 4 die set) to do the debelling/crimping. Plus, it *should* be easier to adjust the seating in one die and the debelling in another die rather than all together in one die, correct? (should being the operative word. LOL!) Thanks all! Mat
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Question about the Lee Factory Crimp Die. So if you pass your cartridge thru a FCD: Do you find they do not pass your case gage ? If so, which brand of case gauge ? Do you find they do pass the infamous 'plunk test' ? I find they all plunk test. I don't own a case gauge.