Making a 32 Special work

[stocker]

After a bit of trial and error I found that my M-64 of 1949 or 50 vintage really prefers boolits sized .323 (RCBS 32-170FNGC.

My dies are an older Lyman set and I found the expander button only measured .318 which led to collapsed cases when seating the .323 boolits.

The available solution was to get an RCBS expander/ flaring die with the expander dimensioned to handle .323 boolits. This solved part of the problem .

The Lyman seating die however was tight enough that it promptly removed the flare and sized the brass almost back to where I started again resulting in collapsed cases once more.

I measured the depth in the seating die to the crimp shoulder and marked a dowel at that depth. The dowel was split lengthwise for an inch and a bit in a band saw to take a section of 320 grit emery paper which was slid into the slot and wrapped on the dowel to a tight fit in the die.

Chucking the dowel in the drill press and with oil in the die I hand held the die and proceeded to lap it out, finishing with a 600 grit polish. By not going deeper than my mark on the dowel I was able to retain the crimp shoulder.

The end result is a die that works and my rifle likes the results. The whole process took less than an hour including a couple of tests which indicated more metal had to be polished out of the die.

If I had better sources of getting reloading tools quickly this probably wouldn't have been done at all but if you have similar problem the process works just fine.

[dragonrider]

Well done Stocker,

[jballs918]

i use the rcbs dye with said rcbs mold. i use a lyman expander and get some pretty good results. about 3 inch at 100 yards. thats just becuase i cant shot. i have found the rcbs dyes work really well

[stocker]

The Lyman dies have some other deficiencies as well including too little adjustment on the bullet seating stem. They would probably work fine with standard and longer nosed J-bullets but this rifle won't be seeing any more of those. I will be looking for a replacement die set but they will have to be ordered and are thus a couple of weeks away. I was out of loaded ammo and local sources didn't have a set of 32 dies in stock so the modification was made to get back in business aand make some hunting loads.