Thread: Getting ES down with 223

Originally Posted by ebf

Hey Zimmer Always fun talking to you about reloading.

I'm curious about your experience with the Redding body dies. That's what I've been using for years. Do you think the body die somehow introduced runout on the neck or projectile ? I am not sure how that would happen, unless the die itself was cocked at an angle, and the whole case body got skewed... What neck die did you follow the body step with ? My sequence is Redding body, followed by Lee collet neck die, both using Forster cross bolt lock rings.

I checked fired cases out of the chamber and they had zero runout. Sized in the body die (not just my 308) and there would be a few thou runout. Not much but there. Measured with a 21st Century gauge both on the outside of the neck and inside. Following up with Redding Comp bushing and runout not removed. Tried leaving the bushing floating and also locked down and no difference.

The Forster (or and quality brand) FLSing die totally supports all aspects of the case, the neck cannot move.

Lee Collet dies. Love em. Used up to the time I changed to FLSing everytime. Never had runout issues using the Lee.
Although I still use them on my 223.

Yep, changed to Forster lock rings years ago. Probably didn't have the gear back then to measure improvements but did it as a matter of course to hopefully remove a variable. Like a lot of things, a little bit of this and a little bit of that can gave a cumulative effect so it's a matter of working thru them.

One thing I've noticed, and it's probably spring back, hopefully minimized by annealing is that the neck can have a slight taper front to back on it after sizing. Not helped also hy the sometimes poor quality of bushings. Although seating the projectile should expand the taper uniformly it doesn't always seem to be the case. Runout at the point on the projectile just outside the case neck can be zero whilst at the projectile tip can be lots.
I have honed my seating stems to individual projectiles eg the Juggenauts and this mostly eliminates this.