Unscientific Comparison - Lee VS. RCBS

[Uncle R.]

I've been loading sporadically for my .375 Win. for several years, using Lee dies which I bought simply because they were in stock at the dealer.
<
Every loading tried so far was with Hornady 220 gr. bullets. My cartridges ALWAYS came out crooked - the bullets visibly cocked in the cases with a noticeable bulge in the brass on one side of the neck. I tried many different techniques of seating with results always the same. As you'd expect, accuracy wasn't much.
<
I recently bought a set of RCBS .375 dies from a member on this board. Last night I assembled the first few rounds loaded with those RCBS dies. Same bullets - same lot of cases - same everything except the dies. Eureka! I have straight cartridges. I haven't spun them on my RCBS tester - but at least they're VISUALLY straight which is a heck of an improvement over what I got with the Lee dies. I haven't SHOT any yet but I'm hoping the targets will show the difference too...:roll:
<
There are over 30 sets of dies in my cabinet, and probably 85% are RCBS and just a few are other brands. Over the years I've had a maybe 3 or 4 die-related problems - but never with anything in green boxes.
<
You gotta love Big Green!
<
Anybody wanna buy some Lee dies? :twisted:
Uncle R.

[Ia.redneck]

Amen to that Uncle R!!!!!!! Big Green's treated me extremely well over the years..............seldom look at anyone else's stuff..........their equipment is first class and if there rarely is a problem, they make it right and then some!!! :drinks:

[35remington]

Uncle, did you try tap seating as well as the 180 degree turn?

[Uncle R.]

Uncle, did you try tap seating as well as the 180 degree turn?

I'm not sure what you mean by "tap seating" - I tried turning 180 - seating in stages with 180 then 90 then 180 turns - I tried starting the bullet slightly then turning and "finger straightening" then seating completely - or in stages with turning - or while muttering incantations. (Gotta keep the "incantations" under my breath - kids in the house you know...) Seating a long-sided flat-nosed bullet in a nearly straight case seems like it ought to be easy to design a die for - but maybe not. I suspect the internal dimensions of the Lee die were just too dang large to keep the bullet aligned.
<
The RCBS dies worked. (No surprise!) [smilie=1:
<
There are a few sets of Redding dies on my shelf and they've been excellent too. There are three sets of Hornady dies and one of them was problematic. I've had grief with one set of Lyman dies as well - and I only own two sets. I think I have maybe three sets of Lees. Even though I have more RCBS dies than all others combined they've never given me any grief.
<
Still love Big Green... :)
<
Uncle R.

[GabbyM]

well hold on to your good old green stuff. They are all made in India now and are junk across the board. I purchased five RCBS bullet molds this summer and four are junk.

I'm fed up with these bean counters sending our jobs to Asia. They can just kiss my tahootie.

I had already started buying Redding and Forester reloading dies because I liked the match seaters. Some Wilson hand dies too. Don't know where those are made.

I don't have a crystal ball buy I'll predict RCBS's reputation is about to go to hell in a hand basket. They have been reduced to nothing but a logo owned by a big corporation.

We are all getting stabed in the back.

[EMC45]

RCBS makes their Rock Chuckers in China! That really upset me me! Didn't know about the Indian dies though.

[Heavy lead]

I have had good dies from all makers. I love Lee handgun dies period, I've had others, but by far like the Lee the best. As far as rifle dies (bottle neck) if I can pick and they are available, I prefer Hornady dies, second Lee, then RCBS. The king of them as far as quality is Redding. They are awesome. Lyman are my least favorite. As far as accuracy, I have never noticed a difference between one or the other, except, at least for J-bullets Hornady has the best standard seating die IMO.

[Tom W.]

My only Lyman things that I own are a lube heater, an ingot mold, and a loading manual.. Had a mold once, but traded it... My dies are RCBS, Redding and Hornady...Had some Lee dies, but sold or traded them off, too. I do have a few Lee bullet sizers. They work pretty well...

[Bret4207]

I've been loading sporadically for my .375 Win. for several years, using Lee dies which I bought simply because they were in stock at the dealer.
<
Every loading tried so far was with Hornady 220 gr. bullets. My cartridges ALWAYS came out crooked - the bullets visibly cocked in the cases with a noticeable bulge in the brass on one side of the neck. I tried many different techniques of seating with results always the same. As you'd expect, accuracy wasn't much.
<
I recently bought a set of RCBS .375 dies from a member on this board. Last night I assembled the first few rounds loaded with those RCBS dies. Same bullets - same lot of cases - same everything except the dies. Eureka! I have straight cartridges. I haven't spun them on my RCBS tester - but at least they're VISUALLY straight which is a heck of an improvement over what I got with the Lee dies. I haven't SHOT any yet but I'm hoping the targets will show the difference too...:roll:
<
There are over 30 sets of dies in my cabinet, and probably 85% are RCBS and just a few are other brands. Over the years I've had a maybe 3 or 4 die-related problems - but never with anything in green boxes.
<
You gotta love Big Green!
<
Anybody wanna buy some Lee dies? :twisted:
Uncle R.

It never occurred to you to send them back with a letter explaining the issue? I've had problems with all the majors gear, one time or another.

[missionary5155]

Lee dies are like anything else made with human intervention... It can be faulty...
Contact Lee... tell them the problem.. and they WILL fix or replace it. Least they have all my itty-bitty problems over 25 + years using their equipment.
I have had Old RCBS,Hornady, Dillon, mishaps and they ALL are very helpful and kind in fixing or repairing.
I am saddened to know the new stuff is imported... UGH !!!

[wiljen]

Everybody has made a lemon at some point, the real difference in companies is how they handle it when you send it back. If you don't give the company a chance to make it right, you'll never know.

I always pick on Ruger as I had a vaquero that was poorly made and went back to the factory twice before I finally gave up on it and traded it. First time the cylinder was cut wrong - 2 chambers would barely chamber a factory round (I mean you had to force them into the cylinder unfired and drive them out with a rod after firing). Sent it back, they fixed that, fired less than 3 cylinders full of 38s (in a 357 mind you) and the front sight fell off. Back to the factory it went again. Got it back again, I couldn't make it shoot anywhere near point of aim with the new front sight, it hit almost a foot to the left. At that point I traded it off at one of the local shops.

What can I say? Ruger Sucks? Nah, I just got a bad example. Their service department did treat me well, I ended up paying to ship it twice (not the best, but the norm in today's world), they did get my gun back in a reasonable length of time. Admittedly, I'm a bit leary of buying another Vaquero after that, but I'm not gonna decide to give up on Ruger in total just yet.

Deciding not to buy Lee because of one bad die, that you didn't give them the opportunity to make right, cuts off a lot of good options available to you. I also hope you always have the discretionary income to buy the Green stuff. For me, I'll keep buying the best value for my dollar as I have few enough of em that it matters to me.

For the record, my Lee 375 dies produce good ammo with no visible runout (Measures .002 on the RCBS Tester) and it shoots to 1.5 inches at 100 yards out of my contender when my old eyes and less than gilt edge skills can match it.

[35remington]

"I suspect the internal dimensions of the Lee die were just too dang large to keep the bullet aligned."

There's an easy way to check. Most Lee seating dies are cut to allow the use of jacketed bullets, but are not large enough for cast. If you have a cast bullet handy, see if it will pass through the seating die, top to bottom. If not, the interior diameter is cut for jacketed bullets, and that shouldn't be the problem. A bullet of a thousandth larger than jacketed bullets should pass, but two thousandths is problematical with the Lee die sets I have.

Tap seating entails aligning the bullet roughly with the case, gently raising the ram and giving the bullet a couple or three very light "taps" against the seating stem, starting the bullet minimally in the case. Don't use firm pressure to start the bullet; "tap" it in. This aligns the bullet straight with the case in nearly all instances I've tried. Considerably less runout results.

Even with dies that do not have a straight line bullet seating feature. In fact, that's what it is intended for to overcome alignment/runout issues in ordinary seating dies.

[Halfbreed]

Wiljen,
I had a S&W 629, lew horton special that was a real lemon, 1 trip to the gunsmith I bought it from new, 2 trips back to S&W, it was a real piece of junk. I traded it off for a Ruger p-97, an apples to oranges comparison but it goes bang with every squeeze of the trigger. And HITS where it is aimed at.
Then the customer service B.S. And I will never have a S&W again.
Now i am really having fun with a Taurus Raging bull in 45 colt.
John

[Lloyd Smale]

you can search all the internet fourms and find someone bad mouthing the sevice of every company in the bussiness. Ive had good and bad experiences with about all of the gun manufactures. If i quit doing bussiness the first time they gave me a headache i would be out of places to buy anything. Funny thing is people buy 30000 dollar trucks and if they break and need warantee work they think nothing of it but let it be a 20 dollar set of dies or a 500 dollar gun and they come unglued. For some reason they think a gun should be perfect and never break. Everything we use is mechanical and is subject to wear and breakage just like anything else mechanical. One of my biggest chuckles is a guy who buys a progressive press like a dillon or hornady and breaks a small part and then throws a hissy and says its junk.

[James C. Snodgrass]

:coffee:I hear ya Lloyd , I drive a truck for a living and I'll be damned if every manufacturer doesn't sell them then call them back for recall work . You know if a company buys 1500 units at 70 to 80 K each you would think that they would do more quality control ? As far as dies go and service of them Lyman is the only company that hasn't given me satisfaction . Not to say they are the only ones that can make a lemon but every one else has made it right . James

[Uncle R.]

Hey - I'm not bad-mouthing Lee exactly - I like and use some of their stuff. The auto-prime II is still my favorite priming method - fast, cheap and easy with great precision and feel. I'm gonna order one of their hardness testers before the end of the month 'cause Midway has 'em on sale. I don't hate everything Lee - I'm just not real impressed with their dies although I like the collet feature on their decappers a lot.
There are a lot of green tools on my bench and one or two of them have gone back over the years too - RCBS has always been excellent about fixing or replacing and I expect that Lee would do the same although for what I have invested in the dies it's probably not worth the aggravation.
If RCBS stuff is now being imported - if it goes down the tubes in quality, it's gonna be a great sadnes to me. I always thought it was nice to be able to buy well-made effective tools for a fair price. Dang!
I took some of my nice straight RCBS loaded ammo out yesterday and fired it for groups - and I still get minute-of-paper plate accuracy. Whatever my problem with that rifle it wasn't entirely due to cocked bullets. Sigh... I like the rifle a lot but if I can't get it to SHOOT it's in danger of becoming an orphan...
:-(
Uncle R.

[1hole]

Sorry you had difficulty with any reloading tool. I too have something over 30 die sets by all makers and several that are long out of business. I've measured every way possible and found there is as much variation within a brand as there is between brands. I mean, all those I have owned or borrowed to test are pertty much the same, on average. Of course that sorta means about half of them are less than "average" while the other half are above average and brand doesn't seem to matter.

The bent ammo your dies are making sounds like a poor match between the sizer's neck and the expander diameter. Your case necks are left too small so the bullet has to be it's own expander. That's a sure path to a lot of bullet tilt and no amount of seating method, or seater die, will change it. Send the sizer to Lee, along with a couple of dummy rounds to show what you are getting.

Actually, I have found Lee's simple "dead length" seaters to be about as good as my Forster and Redding BR/Competion dies, and maybe a little better than the TERRIBLY expensive RCBS competion seater!

If RCBS is getting dies from India now (as well as getting their press castings and dial/digital calipers from China) have they reduced the retail price of their tools?

[Charley]

I've loaded a fair amount of .375 Winchester in a set of Lee dies. Very little runout, and the bullet or boolit is centered in the case.
You got a bad die, doesn't mean Lee= bad, RCBS=good, I've had good and bad loading tools from just about every manufacturer. That's what a warranty is for.

[Larry Gibson]

Uncle R

I doubt there is anything wrong with your Lee dies. I've run into the same problem with many tapered case dies. I can show you a set of Lee vs RCBS dies where the RCBS dies give the crooked bullets when seated. The problem is one of how much they size the case mouth. I'll bet if you mike the inside diameter of a Lee sized case you find it considerably smaller diameter than that of a case sized in your RCBS die. In your case the Lee die is sqeezing the case mouth more. This puts a lot more case neck tension on the bullet and the bullets seat crooked. And M-die would correct this but a simpler solution is to back the Lee FL die off until the inside diameter of a sized case is .002-.003" smaller than bullet diameter. Or until the case mouth is the same inner diameter of the RCBS sized cases. I think you'll then find the bullets seat as well in the Lee dies as in the RCBS dies.

Larry Gibson

[exile]

All my reloading stuff is Lee. I am not very mechanical, so I appreciate the ease of use and the price. Glad it is made in America as well. Seems like we all need to support Lee in some way or another, otherwise, where would we go for custom made bullet molds (not that I have purchased one yet, but I would like to).

35remington, that was good information regarding tapping a bullet in when seating it, I had not heard that before.

Exile

[Uncle R.]

Thanks to all of you for your input. Again - I'm not bashing LEE completely, or exclusively, and I recognize that my conclusions are based on my personal experience and don't constitute scientific or statistical PROOF that one brand is always better than another. All I'm saying is that by far the majority of my die sets are RCBS and if the "problems" are equally distributed among all brands then by far the majority of my PROBLEMS should have been with RCBS too - but they weren't. I HAVE had a few problems over the years but NOT with any of my RCBS dies. Based on my personal use it's a fair conclusion to say that RCBS knows how to make good dies - or at least they DID. If they're outsourcing to some second-world country now - well - obviously that might change things.
I realize that many (Most?) manufacturers WILL stand behind their products and will (eventually) make it right - but I also realize that I want my tools to work RIGHT right away - not after a trip (or several) back to the manufacturer for warranty repair. I contend that it's not "just as good" as long as the manufacturer eventually gets it right. Who needs the delay or aggravation of sending things back for repair when they SHOULD have been right in the first place?
And Loyd - I do feel the same way about my vehicles. I realize that PERFECTION is impossible in this fallible world, but sometimes those manufacturers simply cannot be excused for their shoddy quality and the resulting recalls. I love my Detroit iron as much as the next guy - and it makes me angry to realize that the Japanese and even the Koreans (For the Luvva Pete!) are running OUR automakers right into bankruptcy simply by offering better engineered and better quality vehicles. I don't blame the purchasers for buying foreign - I blame Detroit for making it look like the only sensible option to WAY too many people.
Anyway - maybe I really will hang on to my "old" USA made green tools in the hope that they'll someday be called "vintage" and worth a fortune on EvilBay.
Uncle R.

[1hole]

"the Japanese and even the Koreans (For the Luvva Pete!) are running OUR automakers right into bankruptcy simply by offering better engineered and better quality vehicles. "

Off topic, but I agree. Sadly too.

Our engineers are as good as any in the world. Our production line workers can only assemble what comes down the parts line. It's our "get a lot of money, quick" managment mindset that make the engineers design sorry parts and the workers have to install them on the line.

In the late 40s, Jap production management was trained by one of OUR people. JHe said to put quality before profit and they did while our home managers heard but ignored his advice.

In the 50s and 60s, our self absorbed managers got rich but sowed the seeds of destruction for the American manufactoring base. Today, it seems our management schools still have not learned a thing so each "new" crop of MBAs who will become CEOs, etc., continue in the same self destructive ways. We may be past the point of no return.

And American semi-socialists like Obama will pound nails in the coffin of American manufactors and other businesses with taxes, regulation and his "share the wealth" of any hard earned success with non-producers measures.

[Navahojoe]

You really can not pay much attention to me, :mrgreen:I am just a simple, old, country boy, BUT!
I am in the process of depriming 1000 ea. L.C. .308 Brass, military crimp, for a friend who is missing a hand. I was using the Lee fitall depriming die,with no problems. If I hit a primer that was exceptionally hard to punch out, the depriming rod would slid up in the die. Loosen the lock nut, slide the rod back down, tighten nut and retry. No problem, no breakage.

My same friend brought his RCBS die set and said, "Here, eliminate a step by depriming and resizing at the same time". The second piece of brass, broke the darn decapping pin. Guess who is getting a call on Monday?
On the other hand, I have an old RCBS jr. that I bought off EvilBay several years ago. It has never stuttered on anything, including resizing those .308's, and, if I ever buy a case trimmer, its going to be green, if you know what I mean!

But, I do like my Lee die sets, presses, and accessories.
By the way, the Lee inner and outer cap for chamfering the business end of the brass works very well on a cordless drill to ream out the military crimp in this brass.
regards from North Alabama
NavahoJoe

[TAWILDCATT]

just a thought,have you looked at the bullet seating stem,does it fit the bullet,if it does not hold the bullet straight it wont seat straight.the hornady dies hold the bullet and the case rises with the bullet.I have all brands of dies.
I understand that RCBS does all the machining on the chinese castings.
one problem is the eviormental rules causing the companies to economize to keep in competition.and its a lot easier to machine aluminum than steel.I bet lyman has not put in new machinery since WW2.same with winchester.I was at a winny plant and the machines had been in production all thru WW2.:coffee:[smilie=1:

[jack19512]

It never occurred to you to send them back with a letter explaining the issue? I've had problems with all the majors gear, one time or another.





+1
That was exactly my thought. This is the first I've read this thread but it came off to me as a very unfair call on Lee equipment, basically Lee bashing if you will. I have never came upon any manufacturer that has produced 100% perfect products yet. :roll:

[bcp477]

Well, that story is very nice. RCBS stuff is gold....and Lee stuff is worse than junk. Everyone who uses Lee equipment must be stupid....or at least, not a "serious" handloader, right ? Forgive me, but blah blah, blah. I'm happy that the RCBS equipment works well for those who swear by it. Really. I bought Lee equipment when I got into handloading, simply because of the price. I read all of the blather on the subject, positive and negative. I made the decision. The Lee stuff has been just fine - not a problem with any of it. It works perfectly, every time. So, will I say that Lee equipment is the "best" made, etc. etc. ??? That is is the embodiment of perfection ??? No, of course not. I don't have some kind of psychological need to insist that the equipment I use is the "best". All I care about is whether it does the job. I'm sure that the RCBS equipment is great. It certainly should be, for the price....and the praise heaped upon it by many people. That's wonderful. But, excuse me if I don't rush out and buy all new equipment - and toss the stuff I have. As I said, it works just fine, as is. Enough said.

[unclebill]

ok
after reading this entire thread here is my take on it.

i have and use
redding
rcbs
dillon
c&h
lee
and even herters
and they make identical ammunition.
i defy anyone to tell the difference between a .357 round loaded with a redding die from one made with a lee die.
the lee is a heckuva lot cheaper to buy and in many cases easier to use.

[largom]

I totally agree with the GREEN box, only the name on mine are REDDING. I mainly use Redding bushing dies because I like to vary neck tension and because they load straight ammo. I also have a couple of Lymans, Hornady's, Lee's, and RCBS. If I were to look at cost only I would say Lee gives the most bang for the buck. I believe Lee has the best engineering staff of all, innovative designs and products at an affordable price.
The only die I have ever had an issue with was a RCBS. As far as China goes, my Lee hardness tester scope says "made in China". Still works great. I do not believe the highest price always gives the best quality nor the lowest price the worst quality. I buy the best tool for the end product and in many cases Lee has made the best tool.
Larry