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Posted: 8/23/2012 2:40:46 PM EDT
| Can the Dillon 550B Relaoder able to use any Lee reloading dies or must I purchase the Dillon ones? A friend of mine gave me a lot of dies and I'd hate to have to purchase new ones. |
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Quoted:
Quoted:
You can use lee dies, you just have to screw them in a lot deeper than the dillons You sometimes need to flip the lock nut over to get the nut tightened onto the die after it's screwed in far enough. and sometimes you have to put the locknut on the BOTTOM of the die. |
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Quoted: if i remember correctly, the dillon dies have a little more of a radius on the bottom, so that it works a little smoother using progressive reloaders, guiding the case into the die better True, however, that means that they can't resize straight walled pistol cases quite as far down as the Lees can. That can be problematic on 9mm and 40s&w brass run through semi autos with 'generous' chambers. I use Lee Deluxe Carbide 4 die sets on my Dillon for all my pistol calibers; 38spl, 357mag, 40s&w, 45acp, and 10mm as well as for 30 Carbine. They have the added advantage of having finger adjustable bullet seater and FC dies vs Dillon's wrench adjustable ones. I prefer Dillon's depriming and resizing dies for all my bottleneck rifle cases over the Lee ones because the Dillon comes with a carbide expander ball which eliminates the need to lube the inside of the case neck. However, I only buy Dillon's depriming and resizing dies and use them with Lee's other rifle dies because of the hand adjustments. Notwithstanding the fact that the Lee die sets come with a powder through die, one must use the unique Dillon powder die to attach their powder measure. I've used them this way on both my 550B and my 650. |
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Dillon Dies work just fine, as do any other dies. I have loaded thousands of 9MM for glocks with dillon dies! Never a problem, some people like to make it a problem......but not in my experience and this dates back to the mid 80's loading on Dillon equipment. There are those that hot rod cartridges and such where case sizing down to the web is needed. Hence Roll Case Sizing is done for some of the high speed cartridges. This is especially true with nuclear loads some people use for various shooting sports.
The body of the Lee Die is shorter then other brands and so the use as previously mentioned of the die lock ring on the bottom of the tool head is an option. |
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Quoted: Dillon Dies work just fine, as do any other dies. I have loaded thousands of 9MM for glocks with dillon dies! Never a problem, some people like to make it a problem......but not in my experience and this dates back to the mid 80's loading on Dillon equipment. There are those that hot rod cartridges and such where case sizing down to the web is needed. Hence Roll Case Sizing is done for some of the high speed cartridges. This is especially true with nuclear loads some people use for various shooting sports. The body of the Lee Die is shorter then other brands and so the use as previously mentioned of the die lock ring on the bottom of the tool head is an option. I understand that many people don't have issues with Dillon pistol dies, but there are handloaders who have issues with them. Bulged cases aren't resized completely all the way down to the rim because of Dillon's larger beveled carbide resizing ring. For many that may be a non issue, however, a friend with older an Glock (bigger chambers) and a Dillon Square Deal has 40s&w case resizing issues. We ran his cases through my Dillon 550B (some years before I got my 650) and my Lee Deluxe Carbide 40s&w die set and his problem went away. We measured his cases after running them through his Square Deal and they measured .421" dia except for a small area down near the rim with there was a slight, .002" bulge ver near the rim that caused the cases to stick in a case gauge. We ran another batch of his cases through my 55B with the Lee dies and the cases all measured .421" dia all the way down to the rim with no measurable bulge anywhere. In addition, I load hot 10mm for my G20L and like the 40s&w, all my cases are resized back down to .421" dia all the way to the rim with no bulge anywhere. |
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