Die Sets From Lyman, RCBS And Lee Compared

while sugars and real artists out there 43-45 else we come in to not let zone and tonight's video we're gonna go ahead and discuss the die sets from three of our favorite companies Lyman our CBS and Lee we're gonna discuss the advantages and disadvantages why we might like one over the other this kind of thing now Hornady is another company of ours that we really like and they make die sets also that are on par with the quality and cost of Lyman and RC so first let's talk about the Lyman reloading die set and that's appropriate since Lyman is our oldest reloading company now when you look at the Lyman die set it's very substantial very well finished well executed and when you hold it it's simply got a la solid feel to it the knurling is very well executed it's almost flawless and very clearly engraved the resizing die has a nice substantial carbide insert that's well protected by the die body a decapping pin assembly it's very simple it has one rod and an integral decapping pin that slipped into the locking ring and when it's in place you simply screw it onto the die body all the way down and the adjustment for the length of the pin is automatic that's nice now the Lyman die lock ring is one of the best in the business all steel and they used to make it so that it was a cross screw this in the earlier Lyman die with the earlier dialogue ring they had a cross screw the current ones are directed toward the threads but it really won't cause any damage to your threads when you tighten that down and Lyman provides you with the necessary allen wrench to make those adjustments so you see that's a very nice dialogue ring and it'll work with all presses including the Forester now the Lyman neck expander and mouth flaring die is their famous em die which has a interesting feature in that for many years the other manufacturers would have a flared adjustment to cause the mouth to be flared out but what Lyman did was have a two step expander mouth flaring die the first step provides the neck tension for the bullet and the second one is a step that creates instead of a flare creates a little fitted step where the bullet sits in there and is flush and square on that step ready for sitting so the famous Lyman M night had that idea all to itself for quite a while but we like the alignment M dine now the Lyman bullets eating die is nice because they give you an extra bullet sitting stem that's for the round nose bullet as well as the semi wide cutter is what this one is and there's no extra cost and they even give you another lock nut but the problem is the lock nut is very flimsy and it's actually kind of God cheap look to it and it's cheap feel to it you try and tighten that by hand that lock nut and see what happens it's not tight so if you want to tight you gotta use a wrench and then that causes this marring at the top of the guide body that's not appreciated but you can compensate by being a little extra careful now in the past that lock nut was actually a little more substantial it's now so tiny that it's really about shell holders are not included in these die sets to God by the show holders separately the costs for alignment I said is somewhere around fifty four dollars but anyone who wants to spend the fifty four dollars for one of the and I sense is gain commensurate quality that will give lots of satisfaction in our reloading you see I've used lots of Lyman die sets in the past and will continue to use them in the future now our CBS another one of our famous reloading companies been around since the 50s or so and this is there a cowboy die set I've got three of them here in the in the different calibers and this is the 38 357 Magnum which is very popular among Cowboy Action shooters this is the decapping resizing die of course and the carbide insert is very nice in there they're all set in there so that there's no damage to the carbide insert and then the decapping assembly is the old fashioned type that has a sleeve with the removable decapping pin very complicated assembly here but it works out nicely you have to adjust the length to do the decapping but that's not really that hard to do not as nice of the lineman the lemons automatic no this is all steel except for the brass accoutrements and that is the brass die lock ring and the little locking ring on top there those are brass that's nice though very attractive die now the engraving isn't very easy to read but if you catch the light right you can read it but this is a nice die again substantial high quality nice Merlin and notice that when you set this and all of these dialogue rings all these all these rings on top here when you hand tighten it that's not moving so you don't need a wrench and that works real well now the RCBS neck expander mouth flaring die again very attractive case hardened look to the die body contrasted with the brass accoutrements but you take out the expanding assembly and you see that it's a very interesting design in this particular set it has the portion that will expand the neck to hold a bullet but then it has a little step like the Lyman Emma died and that little step it looks to me like that's really good for jacketed bullets but then it has the flare so that if you're doing cast bullets and you need a little more flare you just go ahead and put that into the case a little farther and it starts to flare like the lead eyes and this kind of thing so you can flare it for your cast bullets so that's really nice now my 45 colt set has a second expander stem in there one for jacketed one for cast bullets but this one has it in both and it borrows that 2-step idea from the Lyman M die so that's that's really nice I like that but again all this knurling is really nice and when you tighten that thing up that's not moving that's really nice no tools needed now of course they don't give you the allen wrench again to tighten this but you can use the Lyman wrench to do that or now finally the bullets sitting die and that's again the same nice quality die has a stem for semi wide cutter bullets but if you're loading round those bullets then you're are luck because will happen is the flange on the semi wad-cutters stem will cut a little ring in your round nose that won't be very attractive we don't like that and they don't give you a second stem for the Ramos bullets like Lyman does so there's a little bit of a problem there you have to order up another stem for a round nose bullet or you also have to order a shell holder because they only give you one of those you know give you a little allen wrench so these guys don't give you a lot of what you need you have to get the ala carte now these dyes are in a $60 range but if you want something that gives you more joy to reload spend those two three hours at a time reloading and you amortize the money over many years it's really not significant these are good guys now lead Isis lead I sets are lower and cost like for instance of four die sets like $40.00 $43 or something of that nature and even though the cost is low the value is very high because these are actually twily dice when it comes to performance their quality when it comes to fit immune finish of these dies it's not as good noticed there can you see all the tool marks that are still on this and sometimes you'll speak to Lars on this upper part also you'll see scratches and you see little scratches and little dings on the aluminum parts and we cringe when we see the aluminum parts like this is aluminum that's aluminum here that's that's aluminum and then there's rubber parts in there but it turns out that the durability of these dies is not in question they last and they work good carbide insert well engineer decapping pin is integral one-piece and then if you hit this pin and push it up it just comes out the top here and you just loosen it up push it back down and when you get that even to the top of this nut and tighten it down that is the right adjustment so it's well engineered the powder through neck expander and mouth flaring die flares that kind of gives you a little blunderbuss mouth flare but that works fine the bullet you just have to take a little extra time to get that straight when you see the bullet but it works fine no problem with that and it has a nice powder through ability so you take this off and you can put Li Auto drum powder measures or other kind of powder measures by Li right to this guy and it's press activated so that works real well the cedar die they don't give you a lot of stems but I just go ahead and flatten it down like this and I and it'll fit most any bullet style that you want so that works real well for me that's the cedar die and then they give you the li factory crimp die which has a carbide insert that doesn't resize the final ROM what it does is it irons out little bulges that will interfere with functioning and then the crimp is one of the best crimson a business fully adjustable for a light medium or heavy crimp now if you don't like those Li dialog rings a lot a lot of shooters reloaders don't like those with a passion all you gotta do is replaceable replace them with high quality steel dialogue rings and that makes the whole die look much more quality and these aren't that expensive and sometimes you can get them off of other die sets and not even have to pay any money form so look at this resizing die here looks like a lot of quality when you put that dialogue ring on there then you just overlook the machine marks there so anyway I likely die sets enough that I have a lead I set for every caliber that I own can't say that for other dye manufacturers but for Lee I have on for revi every caliber and in some calibers I have more than one set in addition to the die sets from the other manufacturers like Lyman yes it's just good to have a lot of die sets around never know when you're gonna need a good die set so anyway whatever die set you wind up getting they will all work for you and it's possible that you won't be able to tell the ammunition loaded from one die set to another they're all good we're lucky in reloading that we have such good die sets available to us now we didn't mention four of these Hornady makes very good die sets also you're a horny fan that's fine they make cowboy dies also like the RCBS and their cost is like fifty five dollars something like that for their higher quality sets but they have a lower lower cost die line called the American and those are made to rival to cost spend for lead eyes they even give you a shell holder in those so you can go with Hornet II and if you like ultra-high quality and you believe that there's more precision with reading dies and reading dies they'll give you that and you're gonna pay an extra almost double for reading die sets but they're fine and anybody who shoots reading die sets I say more power to them because they're good die sets too so take care out there we have a we're lucky we have a lot of good guy sets bye for now

Channel: FortuneCookie45LC

Views: 55,056

Keywords: Lyman Reloading Dies, RCBS Reloading Dies, Lee Reloading Dies

Id: v6v_Wdph5os

Length: 14min 37sec (877 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 01 2017