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Posted: 3/11/2012 10:24:40 AM EDT
| Good day. My question is do all seating dies set off the ogive of the bullet? I reload mostly hornady bullets. What seating die does evryone use? Thanks. |
| I also have noticed that the Lee dies with "floating" seaters will sometime catch the side of those real pointy lead tipped bullets and make a little mark. I am sure it will not affect it in anyway but what I have gotten into a habit of doing is to, very gently, start the bullet then, ever so slightly, release pressure on the press handle to let those little pointy tips center into the seater. |
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Quoted: Thanks guys. Are the dies with mics on them any good or are they mostly for comp. Shooters? Mostly for high power rifle competition. Rifle bullet seaters normally seat working on the bullet ogive, some pistol seaters work on the tip of the bullet, mostly wadcutters or semi wadcutters, but you generally wouldn't want to do that with a rifle bullet. |
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Quoted:
Thanks guys. Are the dies with mics on them any good or are they mostly for comp. Shooters? The micrometer seating dies are great for anyone who wants to be obsessive about tweaking seating depth precisely by the .001". Without the micrometer you are adjusting seating depth by trial and error. <<<Obsessive tweaker here. |
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Hornady and a few others use a secant ogive where Sierra and most use tangent ogives. Hornady bullets have less ogive curvature, meaning seating stems may leave rings and this can lead to variations in OALs. You can reduce this by custom fitting the stem to each bullet so the seating stem contacts a definite area and not a line contact (which makes the ring in the bullet). How? It takes a few bullets sacrificed for the process and some medium valve grinding compound. The bullet is embedded with valve grinding compound by rolling it on a glass plate covered with valve grinding compound, then seating it in a dummy case. Now with this dummy cartridge left in the die, take the seating stem out and turn it on the abrasive-coated bullet using a drill and length of vacuum hose, keeping alignment of the stem in the die. Eventually, the stem will match the contour of the bullet. The copper is soft, grabbing the abrasive and grinding the steel preferentially. Clean the die and stem, reassemble and adjust to test on a fresh bullet. Repeat for every bullet which has rings from seating. |
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