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Posted: 2/27/2011 5:08:27 PM EDT
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To all those out there that can repeatably make the same ammunition that performs the same and will put 5-10rds into one ragged hole.
I'm just wondering if you use regular seating dies? Or do you use the "precision" seating dies that are $40-100 each? |
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Waiting for the internet commando's benchrest shooting championship to begin shortly.
Buy a Forster's Ultra seater die, they are very good and don't cost as much as Redding's of the same design. Don't expect it to put every bullet through the same hole time and time again. That seating die is made by Unobtainium and nobody can afford it. Buy better bullets while you're at it, they make all the difference in the world. |
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I forgot to mention that I am using considerably cheap Lee dies. I think they were $25 for the three set, and are nothing special.
Someone gave me a two piece Redding .223 Die set today and it got me wondering if they would give me any increase in accurracy? I would rather trade them for something else so I dont want to use them to find out, I would rather keep them in new condition. I've been using Hornady 75gr BTHP projectiles with varget. But on saturday I was dissappointed with the results. I have shot many great groups with them, but they seem inconsistent. I dont think its the projectiles though. Also I the rounds I fired saturday were all weighed out to exactly 23.5gr of powder and I used hornady cases with FGMM primers. This time I know for a fact that it was the ammo and not me, I was using a bipod and a rear bag and there was no movement of the reticle on the target as I fired, I would have 4 shots grouped really tight, and one shot would ruin the whol thing and be an inch plus off of target. I'm thinking that the projectiles might not be getting seated perfectly straight or the same depth every time. |
| I like the adjustibility and sliding guide on the Hornady dies. Super duper expensive dies might do better (if they exist), but I think you would have to do all the other benchrest tricks (neck turning, case weighing/measuring, bullet sorting, etc...) to take advantage of them. My stock .308 will shoot a dime group at 100 yds with plain old dies and Hornady 150 gr bullets. Nothing special.....I just take my time when loading. Be consistent and SAFE. |
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I forgot to mention that I am using considerably cheap Lee dies. I think they were $25 for the three set, and are nothing special. Someone gave me a two piece Redding .223 Die set today and it got me wondering if they would give me any increase in accurracy? I would rather trade them for something else so I don't want to use them to find out, I would rather keep them in new condition. I've been using Hornady 75gr BTHP projectiles with Varget. But on Saturday I was disappointed with the results. I have shot many great groups with them, but they seem inconsistent. I dont think its the projectiles though. Also I the rounds I fired Saturday were all weighed out to exactly 23.5gr of powder and I used Hornady cases with FGMM primers. This time I know for a fact that it was the ammo and not me, I was using a bipod and a rear bag and there was no movement of the reticle on the target as I fired, I would have 4 shots grouped really tight, and one shot would ruin the whole thing and be an inch plus off of target. I'm thinking that the projectiles might not be getting seated perfectly straight or the same depth every time. Interested... How are you weighing your Varget to get 'exactly 23.5gr of powder'? |
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http://i250.photobucket.com/albums/gg272/dryflash3/Dies/P2050711.jpg Just added the mic to my Hornady dies. With the stock dies, I'm at 1/2 for 5 round at 100 yds. Don't know yet if the new seater will make a difference on target. I got it for when I change bullets, easy to reset to new bullet. Thats another thing that is very appealing on some of the "competition" seating dies. |
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+1 for the Hornady seater w/ micrometer (+$20). I called up Hornady when the standard bullet plug was leaving a ring on my 75gr hpbt, and they sent me a custom plug designed specially for the 75gr HPBT. Works great, and I can get 5 shot 0.6-0.7" on a 223 AR15. I wish I had a tool to measure run-out though... |
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+1 for the Hornady seater w/ micrometer (+$20). I called up Hornady when the standard bullet plug was leaving a ring on my 75gr hpbt, and they sent me a custom plug designed specially for the 75gr HPBT. Works great, and I can get 5 shot 0.6-0.7" on a 223 AR15. I wish I had a tool to measure run-out though... If you had that, then it would lead you down a whole nuther path, it may not be worth it. BTW InfiniteGrim, I never had the same luck with Hornady 75's as I have with 77SMK's and 77 Nosler CC's as others have reported, also 4 real close and one out ain't bad (even though I shoot 10) and maybe a better seater won't help that, maybe it's case prep. Are you Deburring the flash holes? |
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I'm not really touching the flashholes. But after tumbling for hours they are really clean!
I was at cabelas today and all they had were 69gr SMK's, I picked 100 of them up to try out. Now I have to do some reading on what kind of charge I should be looking at. I know sierra claims 25.3 is good. So I'm thinking I will try 24.0-25.3 and see how that performs. If I am lucky I can try them out tomorrow too. I know many others have had really good luck with 69 and 77 SMK's in LW50 barrels so I look forward to see how they do. I did some googling, and redding is coming out with micrometer seating stems for all of their normal dies. They are $28 at midsouth, but say "on order" so im not sure when they will be avilible, so I guess I will hold onto the redding dies. |
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<snip> I did some googling, and redding is coming out with micrometer seating stems for all of their normal dies. They are $28 at midsouth, but say "on order" so im not sure when they will be avilible, so I guess I will hold onto the redding dies. The upgrade to the standard dies doesn't appear to have all the features of the competition seating die, the sliding sleave that aligns the bullet with the neck prior to seating. I haven't used on of the competition seating dies, but that appears to be an important distinction between the original and the upgrade seating stems you mentioned. Not sure how much of a real world difference it will make though... |
i think you need more trigger time ,it's easy to blame your equipment when you pull one out of the group. you say things were going good and all of a sudden things went bad. something has changed like, you might be breaking your hold on the rifle at some point during trigger squeeze. i think seating your bullets is your least problem, but wait a minute,you have a new seater die and won't even give it a chance
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i think you need more trigger time ,it's easy to blame your equipment when you pull one out of the group. you say things were going good and all of a sudden things went bad. something has changed like, you might be breaking your hold on the rifle at some point during trigger squeeze. i think seating your bullets is your least problem, but wait a minute,you have a new seater die and won't even give it a chance Before I knew I was pulling the shots off, but this time I had a rear rest and I know the crosshairs didnt move at all. I;m going to just try the new seater. I was going to keep in in new condition if it wouldnt help so I could trade it, but I'll just try it out. |
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i think you need more trigger time ,it's easy to blame your equipment when you pull one out of the group. you say things were going good and all of a sudden things went bad. something has changed like, you might be breaking your hold on the rifle at some point during trigger squeeze. i think seating your bullets is your least problem, but wait a minute,you have a new seater die and won't even give it a chance Before I knew I was pulling the shots off, but this time I had a rear rest and I know the crosshairs didnt move at all. I;m going to just try the new seater. I was going to keep in in new condition if it wouldnt help so I could trade it, but I'll just try it out. Sir, I've read through all the responses to your question and don't disagree with any one. I could probably write a book answering your question but somebody else already has so I'll try to keep it short. To sum up what I intend to say is that there is no single property or dimensional value that by itself will result in a significant improvement in group size at any given distance. As mentioned the Competition or Ultra seater dies by Redding or Forester by themselves are not the end all answer to improved group size for the handloader. They do generally provide an improvement in bullet run out from round to round and are much easier to set up for a desired seating depth or when you change bullet type for the particular cartridge you are reloading. Bullet run out is often related to case runout and you can't correct cartridge run out without also correcting case run out. My RCBS seater dies generally provide as consistant run out as my Redding Competition or Forester Ultra dies provided the cases are consistant and I place the bullet onto the case mouth consistantly. With the Redding or Forester dies I don't have to be as careful when placing the bullet on the case mouth. In my experience precisely measured powder charges will not by itself improve group size either. Powder charges thrown directly from your powder measure will generally provide equally as good a group as an individually measured charge as long as the charges from your powder measure are consistantly within the usual tolerance of plus or minus .1gr. That brings us to case preparation. Case preparation that makes each and every case as nearly identical to every other case is as important to the good group equation as is precision bullet weight and runout. Each individual reloader must decide for themself how meticulous they want to be and what case preparation steps are important. In my humble opinion case neck tension is a very important value and should be as consistant as you can possibly make it. Other steps such as primer pocket uniforming and deburring can also be of some value but many consider such steps too tedious. Another property that should be consistant is case shoulder set back when resizing. Lastly seating depth can also be quite important. Many reloaders carefully measure the chamber throats of their rifles and experiment with the seating depth of their cartridges to determine what depth in relation to the distance of the bullet ogive from the throat provides the best performance. All together there are lots of details that can affect the size or your groups. Which ones are important to you is what you have to decide. JMHO, 7zero1. |
In December Midway had a RCBS Gold Medal seater at a really great price. I had just recently read a report (review) that said that this die was a big improvement over their older "RCBS Competition Seaters" and had finally reached parity with Redding's, and Forster's Mic'd dies. Long story short, I bought the .308 version. I reasoned that if parity was a reality, the RCBS die had one trump...the above the die plate window to drop the bullet in.  I also reasoned that dropping a bullet into a straight line seater like this would be faster than feeding a bullet the usual way...not to mention it would do away with getting fingers in the way of an impatient press stroke and its infamous bite.
I'm a little slow....(been tied up with my Hornady Bullet Feeder project)...so I just got it set up and adjusted...I'll load a hundred and compare them at the range with an otherwise identical hundred I loaded in November, with a the normal RCBS seater that came in my small-base die set. (Shooting out of a Remington R25 rifle). Let you know how it turns out. Will record target pictures of course...wish me luck...my skill shooting is not as good as some of you! 
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I did what I said I would not do.... knew it was a mistake when bought and now kicking myself for being stupid..7zero1 nailed how and why in his post and AeroE iced your question. Case prep is where it's at. Uniformity. I made a trip to Grafs last week for 5lbs of RL15 and Redding bump bushing die with the titanium whatever high dollar bushing for AR loading. That was smart. Have a good set of Lee dies in 4 hole turret head and thought what a great idea having a dedicated seater die would be for single stage press. Forster by the way is the micro seater die to have. Sure Redding is nice but too pricey. Besides Grafs was out of stock on Redding and Forster so I walked out with an RCBS Micro Seater. Mistake.. It seats off bullet tip, yea oal all over the place seating Nosler 77s. Would have been better off with Lee. Besides, if loading a 30 round magazine full runout won't exactly stay the same rattling around, pounding back and forth in your magazine. Spinning case 180 degrees seating with Lee seater die works very well for controlling run out. Posted Via AR15.Com Mobile |
| I have two of the Redding Comp. Micro seater's in .223(and one in 6.8SPC), one for my SS die set and one for my LnL AP die set, while many more steps go into getting run-out to less than .001" I wouldn't even waste my time using any other seater die(except the Forster which is OK IMO) as they require twice the work to achieve the same end result if they even do. |
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I walked out with an RCBS Micro Seater. Mistake.. It seats off bullet tip, yea oal all over the place seating Nosler 77s. Would have been better off with Lee. Posted Via AR15.Com Mobile I do not understand your comments. If the seater die seated off the bullet tip then OAL would be very consistent and brass base to ogive would vary. |
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+1 for the Hornady seater w/ micrometer (+$20). I called up Hornady when the standard bullet plug was leaving a ring on my 75gr hpbt, and they sent me a custom plug designed specially for the 75gr HPBT. Works great, and I can get 5 shot 0.6-0.7" on a 223 AR15. I wish I had a tool to measure run-out though... If you had that, then it would lead you down a whole nuther path, it may not be worth it. BTW InfiniteGrim, I never had the same luck with Hornady 75's as I have with 77SMK's and 77 Nosler CC's as others have reported, also 4 real close and one out ain't bad (even though I shoot 10) and maybe a better seater won't help that, maybe it's case prep. Are you Deburring the flash holes? I actually have not deburred flash holes. I just ordered a tool and will be doing this for now on. |
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I walked out with an RCBS Micro Seater. Mistake.. It seats off bullet tip, yea oal all over the place seating Nosler 77s. Would have been better off with Lee. Posted Via AR15.Com Mobile I do not understand your comments. If the seater die seated off the bullet tip then OAL would be very consistent and brass base to ogive would vary. Understand..it actually seats a little below tip. Will take some pictures when home later this week with calipers measuring rounds. Brass is assorted year LC. Posted Via AR15.Com Mobile |
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I walked out with an RCBS Micro Seater. Mistake.. It seats off bullet tip, yea oal all over the place seating Nosler 77s. Would have been better off with Lee. Posted Via AR15.Com Mobile I do not understand your comments. If the seater die seated off the bullet tip then OAL would be very consistent and brass base to ogive would vary. Understand..it actually seats a little below tip. Will take some pictures when home later this week with calipers measuring rounds. Brass is assorted year LC. Posted Via AR15.Com Mobile Thanks, I understand. |
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