So I decided to get Lee dies against going with more expensive Hornady from Wilson Combat where my barrel was purchased. After making about 185 pieces of brass from LC 223 brass I proceed to load "carbine" 110gr bullets and was quite shocked how crooked the bullets were seated, they were tilted and could be seen clearly with naked eye. So I happen to read at same time one starline review where guy said he had same problem with different 30 cal brass because the necks came from factory too tight .305 for .308 bullet, it was about same for me and he talked about fixing with custom expander so I machined one that looked like NOE with bottom section at .306 and step up section at .309 so it flared the neck about 1/3 to aid going in straight and it seemed like it solved my problem. BTW I called Lee earlier and they blamed this on bullet seating stem not working well with round nose bullets. I told them I'll try spire point bullets. So I tried seating Lee 155gr and with longer bullets my gosh! They came up looking like bananas! I examined the the necks, not only they were crooked / tilting but half had shoulders that were more formed on one side than the other (shifted to one size and crooked). What in the world is going on? Is my FL die making them crooked? Now It's not noticeable until I seat the bullet. I also discovered the seating die has build in crimp functionality so you can't just screw in die until it touches shell holder, you run the case inside the die and you screw in until it touches the neck and lock it. So that's my problem and I am not sure what do about it, sending to Lee might result in dies sent back and a note that saying "everything is fine". I am thinking of making a dummy round and sending to them to see but before I send it out I want your input what I can try solve this problem. I have 2 sets of Lee 300 BLK dies too and wondering if can use 300 BLK seating die? Would a shorter die cause some undesirable freeplay?
Ok now here's the 2nd problem. Now I've read some articles that it's better to full length size and not use expander mandrell because it actually expands, contracts and expands again the case mouth and that just over works the brass. Better approach is to size without expander ball and open up neck with a separate die with custom mandrell and that's was my approach, he said that regular method stretches the brass and I found that to be true, I saw .002 growth in case where as 2nd method it didn't. So here's my problem, when I FL sized the case and went to measure the ID of the neck I was quite shocked! It was .293! Seems to me that is extreme reduction only to be expanded again, now I haven't measured how much 300 BLK die shrinks but don't you guys think this is excessive? Has anybody who has 7.62 x 40 WT Hornady dies tried this?