A friend gave me an older Lyman 450.
Which Dies do the best job.
A friend gave me an older Lyman 450.
Which Dies do the best job.
Failure is not an Option
Nice friend. They both work, and work well. If you're lubing a long bullet or one with lots of lube grooves, the Lyman dies that have multiple rows of lube holes work better. If you're loading pistol bullets, or even regular sized rifle bullets, either works just fine.
Lyman. They replace dies that are not to your liking & you keep the old one.
More holes on Lyman, as said above.
Have not used RCBS for these dies, but they are great in all other area.
NOTE - After sizing, harder alloys spring back more then near pure lead.
I use both and either work just fine. I favor the RCBS for shorter boolits. The single row of holes seems to help that. I have read of folks putting shot in the holes to block them off if needed but never had to do so. I usually pick the least expensive of the two when looking for them. Hope this helps.
Seems to be a big difference in price? RCBS $12 cheaper?
The old Lymans have more holes then current production.
The new Lymans with 2 rows of 4 holes work best for me, then the RCBS with only 1 row of 4 holes.
I have had some older Lymans that had 4 rows of holes, but each row only had 2 holes. So lube had to travel halfway around the bullet from each hole to meet in the middle of the lube groove. It didn't work very well and I had lots of bullets with small portions of the lube groove not completely filled in.
BP | Bronze Point | IMR | Improved Military Rifle | PTD | Pointed |
BR | Bench Rest | M | Magnum | RN | Round Nose |
BT | Boat Tail | PL | Power-Lokt | SP | Soft Point |
C | Compressed Charge | PR | Primer | SPCL | Soft Point "Core-Lokt" |
HP | Hollow Point | PSPCL | Pointed Soft Point "Core Lokt" | C.O.L. | Cartridge Overall Length |
PSP | Pointed Soft Point | Spz | Spitzer Point | SBT | Spitzer Boat Tail |
LRN | Lead Round Nose | LWC | Lead Wad Cutter | LSWC | Lead Semi Wad Cutter |
GC | Gas Check |