Lee collet neck sizing die

[handyman25]

To start to be clear I have had problems with some Lee products. I do not like Lee dies, their 2 cavity bullet molds are fair but for the price a good buy. the ingot mold is a very good buy and I think works great. I also like the Lee push-thru sizer dies. Finally my question is how do the Lee collet neck sizing dies work for us cast bullet users. It sounds great like most politicains but you get screwed in the end. If they work great for us cast bullet users then that brings up another question, I just got a 30-40 krag want to use cast bullets but want the best accuracy possiable. Being cheap I do not want to special order a custom collet neck sizing die set from lee and wait 4 to 6 months, so can I use a 303 british collet die set? Looks like they are very close with maybe only the neck length being different. Some who post here really know what they are talking about. To name two 303guy and grearcrasher. Many others to be sure, my old age prohibs remembering who so I apoligize.

[geargnasher]

I don't load for the .30-40 so I can't say if the .303 will work or not for sure, but I highly suspect NOT. The reason I say that is the Collet Die depends on the shellholder touching and forcing the internal collet assembly upward to perform the swaging of the neck, and there isn't any tolerance in the adjustment. Unless the .303 and .30/40 neck bases begin at exactly the same place and the shoulder angles are identical, it won't work properly.

If you want the best accuracy possible, I'd recommend the use of a good bushing-type neck sizer and an RCBS cast bullet neck expanding die. These come in different sizes, so you'll need to determine your rifle's chamber neck diameter, the throat diameter, groove diameter, thickness of the necks of the brass you're using, and figure your final boolit size based on all of that. Once you do that, get a neck sizing bushing that will make the ID of the neck about three thousandths smaller than your sized boolit diameter, and order an RCBS expander/belling spud that will bring that up another thousandth or so to give you around .002" interference fit with your boolits.

This is just a general guide that works well for me, you may prefer a bit more or less neck tension on the boolit. Sizing the neck just a touch smaller than you need and expanding it back a hair ensures that your tooling will work within slight variances of neck thickness of brass.

There's a lot more to it than this to getting really good accuracy, but as far as sizing the brass this is a good way to go. Most factory sizer dies will resize your cases to minimum specs and even if you "back them off" so they don't push the necks back too far or oversize the body of the case they still work the necks quite a bit compared to a neck-only bushing sizer with an insert selected to size the minimum amount.

The Lee Collet sizers work pretty good, but you need the right one. Plenty of other ways to go about it.

Gear

[Plinkster]

While I would normally defer to Gear's opinion I did some quick checking and with a small amount of handy work on your part I believe this to be workable. All numbers used herein are from Wikipedia so if they are wrong I apologized in advance, I will also be working under the assumption that the Lee dies will size using .002 neck tension. The 30-40 bullet dia is .308 so I'll assume at minimum you will be using a .309 boolit, the .303 uses a .312 dia bullet. That helps by allowing you to sand down the sizing mandrel to the needed diameter for whatever neck tension you choose. This also allows a maximum boolit diameter of .312 without having to order a custom mandrel. Next up is case length and again things swing your way, .303 case length is 2.222 while 30-40 is 2.314. This allows you to put a washer .092 in thickness around the case while sizing and it will work correctly. This an also be customized to your rifle. Granted I have only inspected the internals on 4 Lee collet dies but none of them had a shoulder profile that even came close to matching the case, it doesn't need to. Will this take some fiddling? Yes. Will it work the first go round? Depends on how good you are with sand paper and a file I guess. But the numbers (upon cursory inspection) do allow the room to work. I guess it just depends on how you want to balance your cost/time spent equation. I have no doubt Gear's advice is solid and that route would work as well.

[texassako]

I second the washer method. It is how I neck sized my .30-40 Krag Improved. I used the .303 set at first and chucked the mandrel in the drill press to sand it a bit while spinning. A 30-30 die with a spacer is what I ended up using for jacketed, plus the neck is longer in it's collet. I use them for several non standard cartridges and just get extra mandrels from Lee if necessary. My next experiment is to cut down a .30-06 collet on the minilathe to make a "custom" die for the Krag Improved so I do not need the washer, its neck is length is the same as the .30-06.

[GBertolet]

I also use the Lee .303 collet sizer for my U.S. Krag. I turned down my mandrel in a drill press, using emery cloth. I found that my .303 collet die leaves about 1/10" of the neck unsized. I feel that this is good, as the unsized part of the neck acts as a pilot, centering the bullet more precisely to the bore. I never bothered with any spacers, as I feel things work fine for me as is. There is a limit on how much the .303 die will size a 30 cal neck, so I found cast bullets of .310 or larger seem to work best for proper neck tension using the .303 die. This die is great, cases seem to last forever, and reloading is a breeze.

[geargnasher]

That's what I get for not going to get my cartridges of the world book and checking case dimensions. Looks like these fellas have it figured out. As far as better than a bushing neck sizer? Depends on how well your case fits the collet die. It's nice that the necks and shoulders don't get stretched and the adjustability is really handy, but you need to pay careful attention to keeping the case head centered in the Lee die.

Gear

[1Shirt]

Yep, should work!
1shirt!:coffeecom

[EDG]

You might look at a 30-06 die. If it has enough matl hanging out of the die body you can cut the collet off on the bottom.

[Recluse]

Once my rimmed brass has been fireformed for the particular rifle it is being loaded for, the ONLY sizing dies I'll use from that point forward are the collet-sizing dies.

Absolutely makes my cases last a lot longer.

Also consider annealing every fifth to tenth loading, depending on your load factors and neck tension used.

:coffee: