How to choose the correct sizing die - Understanding the differences in sizing dies

in this week's video we're going to go over how to choose the correct sizing die and all the factors you're going to want to consider when you're picking the sizing die that's right for you stick around when we start reloading for a new caliber or start reloading in general one of the most important choices we are going to make is selecting the correct sizing die for your application in today's video i'm going to try and cover all the considerations you're going to want to try and evaluate and how they pertain to your application all reloaders seem to have a preference and unfortunately i think that's what makes it hard for newer loaders to choose the best option for their application we all don't wear the same size pants we all don't need to use the same reloading die i encourage you guys to watch till the end of the video so you can understand where all these different diet types might actually have their place and i'm going to add an additional step at the end to show you the one thing that i added in my reloading process that made the biggest difference in improving my concentricity numbers before we actually select a die for our application it's important to understand why we're actually resizing the brass to begin with let's go over a couple reasons of why we're actually resizing the brass the first purpose of resizing is to actually make sure the brass fits correctly in the chamber if you're using brass that was fired in a different firearm it's very likely to be an incorrect dimension for your chamber and it needs to be resized to make it fit in your chamber if you're using new brass or brass that was already fired from your rifle this might not be as big of a concern the second reason why we're sizing our brass is to ensure the neck tension is correct the case needs to hold the projectile if you took a case that was fired in your rifle and tried to seat a projectile in it it's very likely that it wouldn't hold it it might fall too deep fall back out we need to make the case of the neck smaller to hold that projectile correctly how much we make it smaller is going to be one of the deciding factors that helps us choose which die is going to be right for our application so again you're going to want to watch the whole way through so you don't miss anything and understand all of the options that we have available a basic full length die is actually going to perform two operations on our neck but we're going to get into that when we actually go over every single type of die the third function we might be doing while sizing our brass is actually decaping the brass this can be done as a separate step before or after the sizing process but it certainly needs to happen now we understand a little bit better why we're resizing our brass let's talk about each one of these styles of dies and what they're really doing the first style of die we're going to talk about today is a standard full-length die now you might get a full-length size and die as part of a kit like our leaf kit here or you can also buy your sizing dies individually the size and die that comes in our leak kit is going to perform the same function as the size and die from forester there are slight differences in how those dies actually work but overall they perform the same functions this is the forester die but inside of the lead die is going to be very similar when you take this die apart and remove the decapping pin we can see that there's kind of two main parts to our die the die itself is actually going to be resizing every dimension on the outside of that case that means it's going to be resizing the body the shoulder and the neck of the case all those dimensions are going to become smaller when they enter the die on a fired case before it's resized the decapping pin is going to enter the brass with little to no resistance on the expander ball it's going to resize the case body the shoulder and the neck when those dimensions have been sized down and the brass is being removed from the die the expander ball is actually going to set the final neck dimension on the case neck the full length die is actually going to be sizing the neck twice it's going to be making it smaller and then setting the final dimension with the expanding device it's the same story with the lead i but the expanding device looks slightly different is still going to provide the same function of decapping the expanding device entering the case and then coming back through the case to set the final dimension on the case neck when manufacturers are making full length dies the part of the die that shrinks down the neck of the case has to be able to shrink down every different manufacturer's size of brass to make sure that it's small enough that the proper neck diameter is able to be obtained so just for some context here this is some fired horny brass and one of these pieces of brass i ran through the die without the expander ball in it and one with the expander ball in it let's look at the dimension of both of these necks so we can understand a little bit better about what's happening this is the dimension that the sizing die shrank the neck down to however the expander ball did not come through this neck and expand it let's look at a piece of brass where we did do that so the best i can show you to make sure we have neck tension on a 264 bullet the expander ball's dimension is .2625 which is going to give us somewhere in the ballpark of a thousandth and a half of neck tension to get the proper inside neck diameter that's opened our brass up to 0.2895 we can see it 2855 and if 2895 was where we really wanted to get to that we had to oversize our brass four thousand smaller than it really needed to be sized for the dye to work appropriately every full-length dye manufacturer has to do something similar to this to account for different neck thicknesses in different manufacturers of brass and lots a lot variation as well the next style of die we want to talk about is a small base die small base dies are largely the same as full length sizing dies with one exception they size the body of the case more these might be the style of dies you want to consider if you're reloading for an autoloader or i have read possibly for a lever action as well i'm sure some people will have thoughts on this in the comments section feel free to leave yours lever actions aren't really something i've reloaded for for advantages that small base dyes are supposed to bring to the table is function however this is typically at the expense of case life when i actually started reloading for 300 blackout i originally purchased just the lease set and the lease set did work however i was randomly getting function issues that's when i switched to small base dies the small base dies size the body of the case just a little bit more size in the case just a little bit more improved my function and i've been using my rcbs small base kit ever since but when it comes to reloading for 223 remington i haven't had an issue with my lease set so i haven't bothered to pick up a small base kit for that your mileage may vary if you're reloading for an auto loader you might want to consider getting small base dies the next die we're going to talk about are neck only dies there are actually several styles of neck only dies neck only dies basically size only the neck of the case when it comes to neck only dies there are actually three different styles of dies that we're going to talk about the first one i don't have a perfect example of but essentially it works the same as a full-length die except it doesn't size the body of the case it simply shrinks down the neck of the case and relies on the same style of expander ball to come up through the neck to set the final neck tension the second style of neck only die we're going to talk about is a neck only bushing die our neck only bushing die we have here from reading it's going to perform a similar function however it's going to use a bushing to do it instead of relying on the die in this particular case i have removed the decapping pin because i always decap on a separate step but for the purposes of this die it's going to look exactly like the other die this is honed out a little bit further so our case is going to fit loosely in there and it's not going to provide any sizing on the body of the case if we remember from our dimensions that we took either on our full-length sizing die the actual outside dimension we were left with was 289.5 i'm not sure how well it will come out on screen but if you can read that you can see that this is a 289 bushing you can buy these in 1 000 increments so when i was neck only sizing hornady brass i was actually using a 289 bushing that goes in the top of the bushing die you tighten it down back it out a 16th of a turn and set the lock ring and if you're lucky you can hear it shake using this neck only style die you can just use a bushing to shrink the outside diameter on this style of die you could also put an expander ball if you really wanted to and rely on the expander ball to open it back up if you wanted to use a smaller style bushing but in this particular case the only thing that's actually changing the size of the case is the bushing itself these are the same pieces of brass that we looked at earlier the 289 obviously easily fits on the one that we did not actually put the expander ball through and the 289 fits tightly on the 289.5 final dimension the last style of neck now we're going to talk about is the collet die i'm not sure if anybody besides lee makes these this is a different piece of fire brass on the collet die you're going to have the center rod that's going to go through your entire piece of brass decap it if you're going to use that it's going to rely on this collet as the brass enters it and the harder you push on it with your press and shrink the neck of that case with the collet there's a couple more pieces to it but this is a very popular way to next size if we remove the pin we can see that the most our collet's going to size that brass down is to have our inner dimension at two six one five so essentially two and a half thousands of neck tension but there's always going to be a little bit of spring back but you're going to control that by how much force you apply with your press and how which is going to mean how far you have this die down your press how hard your press pushes up on that to actually resize your brass that's the other style of neck sizing die let's talk about full length bushing dies now when it comes to full length bushing dies as the name would suggest they're very similar to full length dies except they're using bushings which are usually not included to resize the necks these dies are typically going to come with an expanding device but if you choose to use your bushings carefully you may very well just leave the case at the dimension left by the bushing like we discussed earlier with the neck only die different manufacturers may call these different things when it comes to reading this is a type s bushing style full sizing die horny variant to the same die is 6.5 creedmoor match grade now the match grade is a set but the sizing die included with this set is a bushing die very similar to the reading die but let's take these apart there is an expander ball though it looks slightly different than some of our other dies we can easily see before we've shrank the neck down that this that will easily be inserted into a fired piece of brass our die is shipped with no bushing inside of it and so we'll need to buy appropriate size bushings for our die now this is a 290. what we showed you before was a 289 so we could easily take the bushing out of our neck only die put into our full length sizing die this is going to size the entire body of the case and leave the dimension of the neck at whatever the bushing is in there so just like the name suggests gonna basically do the same function as our standard full length die we're just going to work our brass less by using the bushing instead of smashing the neck down too much and pulling that expander ball back through another benefit of doing this though i don't want to dig too deep into the subject is typically you're going to get better concentricity out of a bushing than you are out of an expander ball pulling back there just because the base is going to be better supported in with that bushing loose inside the die it's going to allow that bushing to self-center on the brass and hopefully give you less run out the next style of die i want to talk about is a bushing bump die now i actually don't have one of these right here for an example there's probably another manufacturer makes them besides forester if you go on forester's website you can basically get the bushing bump die the bushing bump die does exactly what it sounds like it does not size the case body however it does push back the shoulder slightly and resize the neck dimension so if you wanted your case body to be as close to your chamber size as possible but still chamber you can push your shoulder back a little bit to make it chamber slightly easier and still reset your neck dimension again with the bushing similar to our other two applications choose the right size for your application and that's how it works again i don't have one of these but it is a possibility the other style of dye that we're going to talk about today reading actually has body dyes that you can get for your various calibers this isn't exactly it but we're going to use this to demonstrate it body dyes are designed to full length resize the case body as well as bump the shoulder of the case this might set off a red flag well how do you see the bullet you're not going to only with this die this die is typically going to be used in conjunction with another type of die that's going to set that dimension separately the body dies are made without internal parts and are intended for use to resize cases which have become increasingly difficult to chamber after repeated firing and neck sizing my feeling on this and i did not get this confirmed by reading if you remove the bushing and the stem from your full length s die what you're left with is accomplishing the same thing it's resizing the body and the shoulder i haven't used mine for this purpose so you may want to ask the manufacturer of whatever die brand you decide to do whether they recommend doing that or not now we've kind of went over the differences between the dies and what exactly they do let's talk about some general rules for what applications you would want to use some of these for dies that only perform neck sizing are generally reserved for bolt action rifles only some might argue that neck only sizing shouldn't be done in any application but i'm happy to leave that for you guys to decide some of the good things about neck only sizing for neck only sizing you are not required to use a lube that's difficult to remove so you might use something like this graphite lube and be able to do your neck sizing with that the biggest advantage to neck only sizing in my opinion is time you can simply clean your case with some alcohol dip it in the graphite neck only size your case wipe it off with the same alcohol if you want chamfer and deburr and likely you're ready to load that case again since the body's not been resized it probably won't grow very much even though you should check the dimension to make sure it's still under maximum trim length this is a huge time savings it might not be the best option for you but i do think it's fair to highlight the advantages that most everyone can agree on some will argue that it's more accurate some will disagree i guess you're gonna have to find out on your own i plan on doing some more testing on this sometime soon so if you're interested in something like that make sure you subscribe to the channel you don't want to miss out when i get it accomplished i'm not going to try and argue accuracy in this video but i do think that there are some advantages to neck sizing if you're not sure or you're just starting out chances are full length sizing will work well for you and if you are sacrificing accuracy or case life it will be very minimal don't walk away from this video thinking that if you neck size i can get 100 firings out of this case but if i full length size i'm only going to get three you may actually have no difference in case life whatsoever the primer pocket might be the weak point and it doesn't matter how you load it it is going to vary from case to case though the more you size a case the more you're opening yourself up to shortening its case life every caliber is going to be a little bit different and that's why i try to avoid sweeping generalizations as much as possible on this channel talking about small base dyes small base dies are a good option when functioning in an autoloader is your highest priority that is why i moved these in my 300 blackout and that's why i now use it exclusively for my 300 blackout the sizing i did my elite worked most of the time but after i switched the rcbs small base i can't recall the last function issue i had with my 300 blackout reloads if you want them to run a different application they would probably work fine for that too but keep in mind more sizing is more work on the brass choose based on your needs not what someone else's needs are what yours are bushing dies are an interesting option and i plan on doing some more research in this area moving forward here on the channel and put some real numbers behind what those differences are i'm not saying that if you're a beginner you can't use them but they do add an area of complication where you have to work through to ensure the result is what you wanted it to be keep in mind switching lots of brass switching to a different brand of brass with a different neck thickness you might have to buy more bushings so it's just something to be aware of it adds another area of complication but it works the brass less and allows you to customize your neck tension to basically whatever you want it to in one thousands increments in reloading as in life there's far more than one way to accomplish the same task it's great we have so many options to customize our loads but unfortunately we spend a ton of time arguing on whose way is better if you achieve the results you're looking for who am i to tell you to change that aside how do i actually resize typically i actually use a full-length forester die i take the entire center out of the die so there's no de-capping pin no expander ball i run it through the die i set it to push back the shoulder two thousandths the best i can one case might be one and a half thousands another might be two and a half thousands but for me this is plenty acceptable tolerance to set my final neck tension i use expander mandrels like these ones from the 21st century reloading you can use other brands if you like but what's very interesting with these 21st century expander mandrels is you can dial your neck tension in in half thousands increments and you can test to see what's optimal for you at least for me using the full length sizing die to fully size the case and using the expander mandrel to set the final dimension in the case neck has actually given me the best concentricity numbers out of every combination i've tried and i've tried quite a few keep in mind i'm not telling you to do it this way it's just my way i've used some of the bushing dies and i've had good performance but i always seem to get just a little more run out when i use bushing dies than i do when i use the full length size and die with the expander mandrel if you really want to get crazy you can actually have forester hone out these dies to a certain diameter but keep in mind if you decide to do something like that if your brass thickness alters so is your neck tension if you have these honed out too much you can't go back guess it's kind of like trying to unring a bell when you're deciding how you want your process to work how much money you want to spend on your dies there are tons of different reasons and they're all good because they're yours i'm not here to sell reloading equipment i'm here to share the information from the tests that i've run the results i've been able to achieve and the mistakes that i've made along the way so you don't have to go and make the same ones i did eric cortina has a couple videos where he tries to encourage people to stop neck sizing in a video i'll link in the description box below how the best shooters in the world resize their brass for maximum accuracy he talks to several pros in the field and asks them how they size their brass watch the whole video or none of it if you like but at two minutes and 50 seconds in one gentleman he talks to is lou mertica lou has a tunnel in his house and basically did all of the testing for the burger reloading manual he says some interesting things about pressure and sizing for those of you that may be interested you might want to check it out if you want to see how some of the sizing dies compared specifically in 6.5 creedmoor i've got a video i'll link to that you guys can check out here's another video that youtube thinks you're going to enjoy if you like the video make sure you subscribe turn the bell icon on so you know when i publish next week's video thanks so much for watching i hope you come back next week and no matter what size and die you decide on stay safe in small groups

Channel: Bolt Action Reloading

Views: 60,974

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Id: Vev2hhzWG50

Length: 18min 11sec (1091 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 16 2020