Taper die material suggestions wanted

[CHeatermk3]

A friend of mine has just purchased and set up a Jet hobby lathe. We've been shooting buddies since the early '80s and have gotten into the CBA military match game, among others. I want to make some taper dies to fit my boolits more perfectly to my rifles.

I know that there are PTG blank dies available but at $25 plus shipping they are a less than attractive option. I'm wondering if anyone out there has a better option for base stock for making custom boolit sizing/tapering dies?

[country gent]

If you can find 7/8 14 allen head cap bolts in the length you want they are macinable and a good grade steel and tough. Otherwise O-6 drill rod works well, but has to be threaded, hardened and tempered by you. Pre hard 4140 should work also but is harder to machine at 48 or so rockwell. If you use the pre hard then you can set up thread and machine to size. With materials that need hardened you want to thread to size then machine -.010 to -.015 heat treat temper nd then finish machine to size as there may be some warpage or distortion from the heat treat. Some air harding steels are good since they may shrink when hardened but harding and draw times are greater and more fussy. For most dies 4140 or 8620 case hardened may be adequate also. While $25.00 for the die blanks setting up threading the out side and knurling or finishing the rest in some manner, and setting up they may be cheap depending on your machine. A small lathe single pointing a heavy thread can be a slow process. cutting the chamfers and reliefs thrading the body and knurling the top portionon a small light machine may be time consuming. Heavieer machines will cut the threads faster and be more rigid. PTG probably has a cnc center set up dropping these die blanks one every few minutes when they run them. Knurled threaded and a pilot hole drilled. Full coolant high speeds and solid machine tat feeds bar stock threads at 1000 rpm knurls chamfers cuts thread reliefs and parts of square and true at 1500-2000 rpms is faster than it took me to type this. lol.

[CHeatermk3]

Thanks for the tip about the cap screws--I guess having a blank with a pilot hole will make reaming the taper inside of the die much easier to do. I should see if I can find out from Pacific what the inside diameter of the pilot hole is--what their tolerance is. They sell them in various IDs but don't tell whether a, say 30 caliber pilot hole is--.299+ or - what? Maybe the 30 cal. are right on .300--hafta call to find out I guess.

.299 would be ideal I'd think.