vintage ch-die also a bullet sizer?

[jose wales 1957]

heres one for you peeps,

seems like my CH seater/crimp die has a built in secret/surprise... i have a vintage CH loader with matching vintage dies in .32 win spec that would not seat the boolit to the depth i want (shallow) before it crimped. it kept shoving the boolit down even with the seater stem removed. puzzled by this and sleeping on it i found that my cast boolit was too large. after building a sizer die @ at approx .320, it seems that as a second step, that driving a cast and sized to .320 boolit through the die brings ranch dogs .323 mold boolit to .319. I have to wonder, was this a planned process by the CH folks or just a coincidence.... my herters seater/crimp die set in .32 win allows all boolits sized or unsized to fall straight through......hmmmm. i will try them at 319 and if not satisfactory, will try lapping it to .320ish. anyone else experience this? thanks.....:idea:....jw

[HORNET]

That's not as unusual as you might think, especially using cast boolits that are larger than the typical J-words for a caliber. I've got a set of RCBS dies for my 6.5x257 that won't accept anything over .266. I'm sizing at .267 and seating with a 7x57 die...a set of Lyman Hornet dies go line-to-line on a .2245 boolit. Something else to check while you're scratching your head and wondering what the heck is going on...

[jose wales 1957]

thanks for the reply, hornet....

guess one size fits all is not going to apply when it comes to reloading die

manufacturers....kinda had that suspicion when i bought the second set of dies and have not

loaded a complete round yet....;) jw

[462]

That's the very reason why I got rid of all the Lee dies.

[HangFireW8]

That's the very reason why I got rid of all the Lee dies.

I like to keep oddball diameter dies. I might need their oddball diameter someday.

I once had a set of crooked Lee .222 Rem dies. I used to straighten out crooked cases by resizing them with their high side opposite my index mark. One day I ran out of crooked cases and sold the set on eBay.

Right after that I came into a bunch of range discard crooked .222 brass that needed straightening. Sure, one trip through my chamber with a good stiff load would fix them, but I sure did miss those Lee dies.

-HF