Originally Posted by
megasupermagnum
I think you bring up a good point, and part of that is volume. There's a lot of people out there that want, or at least think they want more accuracy than they currently have, but wont be shooting thousands of rounds like you were. I have never worn out a Lee collet die, but I doubt I've put 5000 cases though any one die either. Maybe 1000 through my 308 one. When a collet and cup is less than $10 to replace, I can live with that. You were shooting at a pace far above mine is now.
One of the reasons I've gravitated to this system is it allows more consistent brass at no extra cost. What I do is I buy Lee 4-die sets, and drill out the neck to make them a body-only sizing die. By eliminating the expander ball, you make your life so much easier for headspace control. For no extra cost I can now control headspace as good as any die out there, with the caveat, I have to anneal my cases which you have covered earlier. Despite my rather barbaric annealing methods according to some members, my cases have been quite consistent. I don't have a fancy seating pressure tool like shown, but the target speaks for itself. My basic annealing is more consistent than not annealing. Anything is better than nothing. I anneal every single time on my bottleneck cases.
As for the Lee collet necksizing die, it brings two things to the table that can be beneficial. The first is the concentricity is phenomenal by normal die standards, and along with that you are sizing to the ID of the neck. I'm sure bushing dies are pretty good, but to really get their full effect you would need to turn your case necks to get a consistent neck tension. I'm guessing bushing dies work pretty good with great brass like Lapua, but I'm not sure they are so good with basic Lake City machine gun cases. The other thing Lee collet dies bring is the ability to change your neck tension the same as bushing dies do. I still bell case mouths for cast bullets and other flat based bullets, but I avoid expanders whenever possible which only add variables. The mandrels are mostly common between calibers, so one set can cover most 30 calibers, or 7mm, or 6.5mm or whatever calibers you shoot.
I'm able to keep headspace at or under .001" variance, and concentricity about the same, and I'm doing that with a basic set of Lee dies most people scoff at, and an annealing setup most people already have in their garage. That precision shooter stuff is one deep rabbit hole though once you start getting into 10+ set brass prep, .01 grain powder charges, and seating pressure gauges. That's beyond me, that's beyond what I can get interested in.
Hopefully this helps someone who wants to take their brass consistency to the next step without spending hundreds of dollars.
P.S. Those Lee dies are hard as woodpecker lips. I've managed to drill out the necks of my FL sizing dies in a drill press, but definitely go slow, lots of oil, and your drill bit will probably need sharpening after one die. No need to do anything with the expander ball, it wont touch your case neck if you drilled out the die, and it will still function as a decapper.