RCBS die damaging bullets- Worst night of reloading in years

[David2011]

Forgive me my friends for I have used copper clad lead. These are bullets; not boolits that are being damaged. Scroll to a later post for the full analysis.

A buddy came by the other night to load some .223 for a match. I had a fairly new set of dies installed on a Dillon toolhead. I have another set of older RCBS .223 dies for use on single stage presses. The bullets were Hornady flat based 55 grain V-Maxes. These dies had only been used to load boat tail bullets previously. Right off some of the plastic tips got broken while seating them. We re-chamfered the brass on a VLD chamfer tool to help the flat bases sit upright going into the seating die. As long as the bullet entered the die sitting fully upright the tip was OK but if it tipped over to the side the tip would get broken. I removed the die from the press and found red plastic all around the OD of the seating stem. On further investigation after cleaning the plastic away I found that the seating stem was extending into the "chamber" portion of the seating die, creating a lip on which the tip would catch and break. The force required to break a tip was about the same as that required to seat the bullet so it was hard to tell which was happening until the snap was felt. The seating die was screwed down until it contacted the cartridge without pushing it back so the stem is as far "up" as it can go. It took over 3 hours to load 200 rounds on a Dillon 650. We also discovered that Varget likes to

The seating stem has a fairly broad rim and even if retracted inside the portion of the die for fuller profiled ogives it will still catch the hollow point of a SMK or the exposed lead of a soft point and damage it. All seating is being done to SAAMI maximum overall length for use in AR-15s.

I called RCBS and the agent's response was that they can't make a seating stem that fits everything and I understand that. On subsequent tests once adjusted to 2.250" OAL the stem still contacted the nose of 53 grain SMKs, Sierra 40 grain soft points and Sierra 55 grain FMJs with enough contact to leave marks, shave lead and damage the bullets. I have a number of additional bullets to test but I think the only bullets that will load without damage are the very blunt nosed FMJs. RCBS graciously offered to make a custom seating die for half the price of a set of dies ($17.95). I told the agent I would get back with him after testing every bullet I have between 50 and 80 grains and give him my findings.

I think the stem can be fixed by shortening it about 0.060", cutting a new taper and making the edge of the cavity narrower. Time to fire up the lathe. If I mess up the first one I can make the stems out of 1/4x28 grade 8 bolts or socket head capscrews.

I suppose they need a stock answer, the offer to make a custom die, but an Internet search revealed that this is not an isolated problem. IMO the seating die in the #11101 is only suitable for long OAL single shot loads as is. My older RCBS .223 seating die works correctly with every bullet I've tried including the 55 gr. V-Max.

I'll post more as the information becomes available.

David

[Motor]

I think maybe you should just get a new standard seat plug from RCBS. It sounds like yours may be defective or maybe even have been redesigned later.

I routinely visit 3 reloading forums and have never heard of a similar problem and one of the forums is centered around the .223/5.56 caliber.

Funny thing is I'm a machinist and would very likely fix it myself too. :)

Motor

[gloob]

I have the opposite problem with my 223 Lee die. Blunt nose cast bullets will catch on the edge of the seater and destroy the case neck.

I found two off-the shelve solutions.
First, I got a Hornady New Dimension 223 seater die. These dies have the drop down sleeve that guides the bullet into the die. This worked, but I still got a little crunch on some flat-based bullets as they seated, and I didn't like this, at all.

So then I got a Lyman M die for expanding my cases. With the step-flare, I can seat any kind of bullet without an issue. This makes the drop-down sleeve on the Hornady die completely unnecessary, and I actually pinned it up because it was now just necessitating extra lever throw for nothing. The bullets sit straight up in the case, by themselves, and there's no shaving on the base of the bullets.

It's an extra step, but I do this step while priming on the press, so it's not too cumbersone. And the M die eliminates neck lube and inside chamfering of my cases, too, so it works out great for the way I load. I started using them for all my rifle calibers.

[David2011]

Finished testing various bullets tonight. The die was adjusted to get 2.250" +0/-.003 OAL with each bullet and then a few seated to see what happened. The 55 gr SMK, Sierra 50 gr. Spitzer, Sierra 55 gr. Spitzer, Sierra 60 gr. HP, Sierra 63 gr. semi-pointed and Sierra 69 gr. HPBT Match all had light to severe damage to the tip of the bullet and alignment issues from not entering the small diameter portion of the die to align them with the cartridge. Only the Sierra 55 gr. FMJ and fat nosed Speer 70 gr. Semi-Spitzer were seated without damage from this die.

I really think that the problem is with the shape of the chamber of the seating die and not the seating stem. I'll do a chamber cast to confirm that.

David

[Calamity Jake]

Take the seating stem out of the die and chuck it up in a hand drill, with some 400 grit sand paper polish the
offending edge creating a rounded edge, that should solve your problem.

[Tackleberry41]

I have not been impressed with the threaded rod RCBS uses now, they seem to be a bit longer than needed. No idea why they need to be so long. I have older dies, early 90s era, shorter rods. I have a 223 small base die I bought, with it adjusted where it needs to be, theres almost 2 inches of threads sticking out the top, it wont go back in the box that way, so has to be run in in and then readjusted every time its used. Why it would ever need that much adjustment no idea, its almost all the way out so not to hit the bottom of a case.

It probably is hard for them to make a seater that works with everything. I have had to modify more than a few to work with certain bullets. I do like the hornady new dimension seater, one for 30 cal another for 22, its real easy to mess up a hornet case not having things lined up right.

[David2011]

The source of the problem had been identified and resolved. I'll take some of the blame because I overlooked a big detail. The seating stem encroaching into the chamber area of the seating die was a symptom of another problem and not the root problem. One of the frustrations of troubleshooting this was that the first two people at RCBS I spoke with assumed that the bullets were being damaged inside the seating stem and would not hear that it was anything else. The third person I talked with had a die in hand and could see where I was having the problem. He was able to understand that the bullets were getting caught between the shoulder of the die body and the stem which was not where it was supposed to be for proper seating.

Upon further troubleshooting I saw that I was not screwing the seating die body against the cartridge as I thought I was. It was binding on the threads of the toolhead. The older RCBS seating die did screw through the toolhead, all the way to the shell holder if desired. The new die was binding on the last couple of threads of the toolhead. The toolhead is an aftermarket CNC machined third party item and not made by Dillon. Apparently it was tapped with a tapered tap that was not run through to full diameter threads. Some dies would pass through the tight area; others would not. All 5 holes were tight at the bottom and were opened up with the tap. Additional investigation revealed that the new RCBS die body had a 0.0027" larger OD than any other die I measured. No doubt this was a stacking of tolerances issue. The die is probably at the upper end of the tolerance while the holes in the toolhead were without a doubt tapered to a smaller diameter in the last few threads.


After fixing the tight threads in the toolhead, the new RCBS die would screw down properly and the seating stem was adjusted back to let the bullets enter the die's leade. A short run of 50 rounds was loaded without issue after the correction.

David

[David2011]

I have not been impressed with the threaded rod RCBS uses now, they seem to be a bit longer than needed. No idea why they need to be so long. I have older dies, early 90s era, shorter rods. I have a 223 small base die I bought, with it adjusted where it needs to be, theres almost 2 inches of threads sticking out the top, it wont go back in the box that way, so has to be run in in and then readjusted every time its used. Why it would ever need that much adjustment no idea, its almost all the way out so not to hit the bottom of a case.


After mulling it over I realized that if I shortened the seating stem I would just have to screw it in further so that wouldn't resolve anything so I kept digging until the problem was found.

David