Lee Dies in a Hornady LNL

[gzig5]

I've got a new 10mm Auto coming in this week. Tanfoglio Witness Hunter. Time to get the stuff together to reload for this new to me caliber. I've got a Hornady LNL and have been pretty successful with it with multiple calibers. But one thing I notice is that non-Hornady dies just about run out of thread on the die body when used with the bushings. Is this a problem with the LEE dies? I'm looking at getting the four die carbide set. I like to crimp separately and the Lee dies come ready to do that and are priced well, but I'll go with something else if they won't fit. I also have several single stage presses but hope to be able to use the progressive for obvious reasons.

Another question regarding the factory crimp die...is it same or better than a taper crimp die for a case that headspaces on the mouth? My only experience with them is with bottle neck rifle calibers. They work, but I haven't seen any spectacularly better accuracy results and I've damaged thin jacketed varmint bullets by going with too firm a crimp.

[Taterhead]

Congrats on the 10mm blaster! 10mm is my favorite handgun cartridge.

I don't have experience with the Hornady press so I'm no help with that. On some presses, the shorter Lee dies can use the lock ring on the under side of the tool head. But the LNL obviously uses bushings instead of a tool head, so unsure.

Regarding the Lee FCD, the rifle type is a completely different design than the Carbide FCD. The FCD uses a 3 jaw collet to apply the crimp. The carbide FCD, like for 10mm, is like an adjustable taper crimp die. The difference (marketed as the differentiator, but what I feel is a bad idea) is that it has a post sizing ring at the case mouth. It is designed to "iron out" any of the imperfections in the loading technique. They will get poorly loaded ammo to feed, but poor reloading technique should be addressed in the sizing, flairing, seating, or crimping operation. For cast bullets, it can also swage the bullet down.

You brought up a great point about excessive crimping. In the 10mm (and other straight walled auto-loading handgun cartridges), best results are just straightening out the flair/bell so that the round feeds or passes the "kerplunk" test. Some guns with really tight chambers benefit with the case mouth is turned very slightly inward.

[Drew P]

You may have to wrap it with a lot of Teflon sealer tape and run without a nut. Lee makes them a little too short

[Carrier]

Can’t help you with 10mm but I have an LNL and use some Lee dies. I use a Lee U die sometimes for 9mm plus FCD and Lee FCD for 38/357 and a Lee 44 special and magnum 4 die set with no issues with the Lee Lock nuts.
The only time the sizer ring on any of the FCD’s touched the case of anything I have used it for was when trying to load .360 plus size coated in .357. Bought a Lee .358 bullet sizer and that went away.
When I first started loaded lead in 44 mag the sizer die ring did touch the case mouth as I had a little too much bell on it. After adjusting expander a bit that also went away but would sometimes get a little lead shaving.
I bought a Hornady PTX expander for it like I have for 9mm and 38/357 and that went away.

[omgb]

I have a LNL and load 40 S&W. It all works.

[BlackRat]

Yep, the lee dies work with the LNL but they can be rather short so the lock nut is going to be pretty high but that's all. If you're running out of thread you can always get a couple of Dillon nuts which aren't very thick.

[gzig5]

Great info. Thanks

[anotherred]

380, 9, 40, 45, 38, 357 all lee dies with LNL here.

[Lloyd Smale]

some calibers can use the lock not some not. What I do with the ones that have to be put in to deep to use a lock nut is stake them to the lnl bushing with a punch like you would stake the gas block on an ar15. I'm sure if you don't want to do that a wrap of Teflon tape would do it too.