Bench rest dies

[abunaitoo]

I have a few bench rest dies.
The type you use with an arbor press.
None are marked.
Besides making a slug creeo, is there another way?????
Why is it they are all not marked????

[jmorris]

Might not have been made by a manufacturer. Without a photo pretty difficult to even guess what you have.

[garbler]

You’ll have to cast them with cerrosafe. Why are they that way I can only guess but often benchrest and accuracy gunsmiths would cut a piece of barrel and using the same tooling/reamers used on the rifle would make a set of hand dies for the customer or themselves. For themselves they may not have marked them. The beauty of these dies is they are cut exactly like the rifle chamber a perfect accurate match. I’ve got quite a few for some older rifles and use them exclusively rather than threaded dies

[country gent]

All the manufactured straight lines I have seen were ID as to caliber and maker. But back in the hey day of wild cattng ( 50 60s and early 70s) a lot of rifles were built and the straight line dies bored by the gunsmiths on his lathe. These werent always marked. Another is a lot of these dies were made in tool rooms as govt jobs for friends and co workers.
With hunters benchrest and plinkers these die sets were popular. While slow for low volume shooters they were inexpensive and simple.

Over the years in tool rooms I have made a few sets of these dies for myself and others. With the cnc machines of today they are a fairly simple project, draw the case up on the computer subtract .001-.002 from it and write the program.

[abunaitoo]

I'll dig them out and take some pictures.
I think a few had makers name stamped on them.

[barrabruce]

I have known about these dies for over 40 years and never seen a real live one.

It has always I intrigued me how do you size or neck size the case?
I assume you could run the reamer a bit short and it could make for a smaller case if tapers worked out o.k.
But how do you neck size with them.
Do they have a bushing and seater stem like Wilson?

[jsizemore]

I bet you have 6ppc, 6br, or 222 Rem dies from the benchrest shooter. The former owner or gunsmith probably bought die blanks and chambered them with his reamer. Probably figured they would go with the gun.

[abunaitoo]

You could be correct.
I'll just have to dig them out to see.

[jsizemore]

Those 6mm dies could have necks from 264-271.

[TrxR]

I have known about these dies for over 40 years and never seen a real live one.

It has always I intrigued me how do you size or neck size the case?
I assume you could run the reamer a bit short and it could make for a smaller case if tapers worked out o.k.
But how do you neck size with them.
Do they have a bushing and seater stem like Wilson?

I believe most sizing dies use a sizing reamer which is slightly smaller in certain spots than the chamber reamer. I know whe i ordered my 30br reamer from Manson he asked if i wanted a sizing reamer as well. Now for a neck sizing only you could probably use the chamber reamer the make some sort of bushing setup like the Wilson's dies.

I could be wrong.

Id be interested in seeing pictures of these dies if possible .

[garandsrus]

Well, here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybKjuQeA5kA

I have a set for my 6 PPC and they work very well.

[jsizemore]

I sent 3 fired cases from my 6br to Harrells so they could match a sizing die to my chamber. It uses bushings to size the neck. I set the die to bump the shoulder 1 1/2 - 2 thousandths. I went the Harrells direction so I could use a standard press that accepts 7/8-14 dies.

[abunaitoo]

They were all in one box, mixed up.
I separated them by finish and color.
Most had tags taped to one of them.
A few were stamped.
Just a sample of what I have.
Have more.

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[garandsrus]

If the guy had a 22 PPC, he more than likely had a 6 PPC and that is probably what the other dies are for. A set for .308 wouldn’t be too big of a surprise.