Wilson Arbor Dies Question

[catmandu]

For those of you using the Wilson dies, where are you buying your sizer bushings at?
Gotta be a cheaper alternative.

Also what size do you find most useful for 308/30'06 for cast?

Thanks,
Paul in WNY

[Ickisrulz]

CH4d makes bushings that will fit the Wilson dies. I don't know if their price is better though. The idea in bushing dies is that you measure for your specific needs (bullet). So what other people use might not be best for you.

[lightman]

Wilson will interchange with Redding, also. I buy mostly from Sinclair and Midway. I like Wilsons bushings better than most others.

[Char-Gar]

I have a .332, .333, .334 and .335 bushings for cast bullet in the 30-06. However, when it comes to things this small, the bushing size will vary with the make of brass and neck thickness. That will change the inside diameter of the case neck.

The best notion is to turn the case necks to a uniform thickness that will give you the inside diameter you want. Of course if you change the size of your cast bullets everything changes also.

Bear in mind the dies only size about 1/4 of the neck length. The rest is left unsized. This works fine for shooting off the bench but not solid enough for field use. At least, I would not go trudging over hill and dale with loads like this in my rifle or my pocket.

If you are going to use these kinds of dies, you will need several bushings, so might as well reconcile yourself to that fact. When it comes to loading this way, there is no one size fits all.

You will also need to anneal your cases every four or five loading.

From time to time, these bushings show up on Ebay at a discount.

These type of dies are for the guy who loads at the bench and wants to squeeze every last smidgen of accuracy out of his rifle and load he can get. He wants to shave another 1/16 of an inch off his groups. Doing it this way is an unnecessary expense and expenditure of time for 99.99% of us. For the other .01% it is worth the time and expense. Your choice!

RCBS makes a nice 30 caliber cast bullet expanding die with spuds .308, .309, .310 and .311 that will cover all sizes of cast bullet we might want to use. The cost is a small fraction of what a Wilson bushing die set up would cost and will serve us well for what we want to do.

I answered your question in the first paragraph, the rest is for folks who might read this thread and would appreciate a fuller discussion of the subject.

[W.R.Buchanan]

Chas: I always welcome further discussion. :mrgreen:

Randy

[catmandu]

Thank you all for the detailed explanations on this subject. When reading online various recommendations are made, but until you actually do these things the details of how each works and when they are best used is not always clear. Receiving answers helps me plan with reasonable expectations and cautions that highlights pitfalls that may occur. If you have reasonable attention to detail and ability to measure results reloading in not difficult. But the methods are rarely shared in person, so explanation of techniques that are successful must be passed on by procedures (manuals) and sharing on forums like this. Thank you for sharing.

Paul in WNY

[fouronesix]

Those bushings are easy enough to use and determining exactly which one or two or three or more to get will be part of the game as has been posted. Obviously they work in the Wilson die designed for the arbor press… along with the Redding Competition neck sizing die, etc. But usually those techniques are used by jacketed bullet bench rest shooters. The neck bushings all run about 15 ea no matter the company.

Bottom line, using such reloading techniques for most cast bullet shooting is probably overkill. You might be better served with regular FL dies along with a Lyman M die. If you want to neck size only (which is what the dies are that use those neck bushings), it may pay to look at the Lee neck collet die. It does a super job of concentric neck sizing and is far less expensive than most or all the systems associated with neck bushings. Plus it may turn out that neck sizing is not the "magic" it sometimes is made out to be.

[country gent]

Here is a formula that will get you very close to the right bushing. Brass spring back is a variable it dosnt take into account. Neck wall thickness X 2 + bullet dia - desired tension (interference or press0. This gets me close. I use bushing dies (reddings) when ever I can as I feel they are more consistent than necking smaller then expanding back up. Also less work on the brass