Lee dies

[shepheard]

I have a few sets of Lee dies and seem to like them a lot. The FCD is great. I have a set in 40,44 and 357. Tonight I was loading a bunch of 40 cal 180 JHP Zero bullets. My coal was set at 1.125. I was getting variances of up to .008 thou from round to round. One might come out at 1.124 and the next at 1.132 and the next at 1.127. Is this normal? I had to keep adjusting the die every 3rd round. Maybe I'm just spoiled with my Forster comp seater for my 308 but I don't think these numbers are exceptable. I'm really thinking of giving a set of Horn dies a shot. For my 357 and 44 I seat to the groove and once the die is set I hit the groove every time.

[robertbank]

I have a few sets of Lee dies and seem to like them a lot. The FCD is great. I have a set in 40,44 and 357. Tonight I was loading a bunch of 40 cal 180 JHP Zero bullets. My coal was set at 1.125. I was getting variances of up to .008 thou from round to round. One might come out at 1.124 and the next at 1.132 and the next at 1.127. Is this normal? I had to keep adjusting the die every 3rd round. Maybe I'm just spoiled with my Forster comp seater for my 308 but I don't think these numbers are exceptable. I'm really thinking of giving a set of Horn dies a shot. For my 357 and 44 I seat to the groove and once the die is set I hit the groove every time.

Yes and in pistol cartridges 8/1000 won't make a hill of beans to you in accuracy. Unless you do all your shooting from a ranson rest there are just to many other variables in handgun shooting to worry about 8/1000" in OAL is nothing to worry about. IMHO it won't effect accuracy one iota.

Take Care

Bob

[Graham Smith]

I was having a fair amount of trouble with seating myself - enough so that I bought a Hornady micrometer seating die. It helped, but not as much as I wanted.

The problem, for me at least was at station 1 - I was using an EGW "U" die to resize and the resistance was giving me some variance in how far up the ram was going. I switched to running the brass through the EGW die on a single station press and everything got better.

After purchasing some new parts, I now have a spare toolhead for the EGW dies but will still run the brass through it as a separate step. It's extra work but loading .40 now is a breeze. I learned this lesson again when starting to load .223 - take the time to do a good job of brass prep first and everything works a lot better afterwards.

[CocoBolo]

I use a Hornady seating die, on pistol rounds. The Hornady comes with both a cupped and a flat seating insert, the cupped insert gives better consistancy in OAL on JHP as the end of the bullets varies so the flat produces more variance. I like the sliding guide sleeve on the Hornady die. Its a std Hornady New deminsion die. I started out using Lee Dies got a set of Hornady then sold all the Lee dies and went all Hornady. I also sold off all Dillon dies and repaced for Hornady.

[shepheard]

Thanks for all the input guys. I wasn't worried about the variance effecting accuracy, I have enough trouble hitting a hill of beans, I was more worried about how the PSI would be effected. I was going for 1.125 and was getting 1.122 to 1.131 or so.