Part 6 Reloading Dies Compared - RCBS Cowboy Dies

well shooters and reloaders and three circles passengers and members this is part five of our video series on the big six reloading die comparisons and part 6 is rcbs and their theme is green green boxes although they've gone into other colors because of different die sets such as their cowboy die series now it turns out that lee is probably the number one in terms of market share in reloading equipment with rcbs being number two now of course you have to consider that hornady might be actually number two or even number one when you take into account their bullet making business but in terms of reloading equipment you gotta consider leaves being number one and number two would be rcbs now fred huntington actually started up rcbs in california and wound up moving the operations to oroville california where rcbs still resides been around since the 60s and probably the late 50s here is a typical rcbs reloading die set and you see that it's got some instructions specifically for this die step very good instructions and the typical rcbs quality the large checkering here meant for robust insulation to die and you see here the hex nut and the hex nut lock ring so that you can apply wrenches to this set if you want to again the use of pliers is a very bad practice as you'll wind up marring and destroying these die sets by the use of pliers with any kind of care at all die sets from rcbs will last for four lifetimes rcbs makes very quality dies in the 50 to 60 dollar range this set happens to be for the 4570 and what you've got here is a full length resizing die has the long spindle but not as long as the hornady dies and then you have the neck expanding die and the bullet sitting down but our comparison here will be using the rcbs cowboy die set now the cowboy die set is a little more expensive from our cbs because it's got all this antiquing and case hardened appearance and the brass dylock rings and brass accoutrements but this die set will load all 45 colt ammunition but it is especially adept at loading cast bullets and this is what the cowboy shooters want to use but it makes this die set actually more flexible let's talk about this one so the resizing die is basically the same as the other rcbs die sets except for the case hardened appearance and the brass fixtures now notice that these fixtures are round plus they have very fine checkering so this is designed for finger tightening only and not for use of any wrenches or pliers especially not pliers so the difference is in the neck expanding mouth flaring die because what you have here for the 45 colt so what you've got here is a 4-5-0 section for neck expansion and that gives you the bullet tension you need but then there's a little blunder bus here and if you want to go ahead and use this section for doing your castles you can but what rcbs does is they give you a second neck expander that has the two step so this is four five oh this is four five four and then you've got a little blender bust here so you got your choice of going either way with doing cast bullets or jacket or whatever you want to use because we like to do the cast bullets we'll go with a two-step we'll install this one in our neck expander die but before we use our die set let's go ahead and treat the dies with our mineral oil rag including the expander plug that we're not going to be using get that nice and covered with our mineral oil i also have another 45 colt expander plug here from rcbs an earlier one that will go ahead and use a 449 expander so in case i want extra bullet tension i've got this one to give me that but we're not going to use this one for this current for this current reloading project so you see it's kind of nice having an assortment of neck expanders 4-5-0 and 4-4-9 and again the one we're using is 450 actually 4505. that's the two-step and here's the second step that mike's at 4-5-4 so setting up the resizing die the full length carbide resizing die simply run the press and then turn the die until it contacts the shell plate the protrusion of the decapping pin is correct we're ready we just run the starline wet tumbled there you go d prime and we're good to go there you go we'll just go ahead and resize and de-prime all of them so there you see the prime cases and a word on primers i know right now with all the interest in shooting and reloading you can't find primers anywhere well the only thing i can say to you is that have no fear the primers will come back and when they do be sure to stock up what you might want to do right now is go ahead and get your other equipment because right now reloading dies are still available although you can't find nine millimeter reloading dies anywhere but the other calibers are still available so go ahead and get those now get your reloading presses and get ready to go with your reloading when the primers come back so we go ahead and take out the resizing die and put in the neck expander mouth flaring die and then uh now again we have our two step expander in there so you go ahead and take a case and run it in and feel how much expansion now you got too much expansion going on so we got back the die out run the case in and check your bullet and you see there's not enough expansion so let's go ahead and lower the stem and ah we're starting to get entry into the case mouth doesn't take long before you can get the right amount of neck expansion mouth flaring with the two step and your bullet goes in perfectly so that when you jam that bullet in there it's going to be square and that's because of the two-step expander creates a nice little seat in there well as we're doing this neck expansion mouth flaring we check every 10 to make sure we're still okay now listen to this when you hear that pop you know that you've got some good seating there it doesn't take long to get 50 cases expanded so there's the last one and you see the bullets sitting in there just the way it's supposed to be so now captain rex has a question for me and that is he has a revolver that has large cylinder throats so he needs to actually load four five four bullets in his so if you're if you're gonna go ahead and load a four five four bullet can our rcbs cowboy die handle four five four bullets and the answer is yes expand by lowering the stem far enough to get the bell to be perfect for four five four bullet and what happens a two step still creates a little seating here and now you got a little bit of a mouth bell because the expanding stem will have a little blender bust section at the very end so we go ahead and do that and what i've got here are some four five four bullets as you see and those go right in press it in and you've got a nice square seat for four five four bullet so captain rex you're in business and in fact if you have a four five five bullet that'll work also now an important test for your bullet seating is take your bullet seating die and back it out a little bit so you don't you don't do any crimping and then back out your seating stem so you don't do any deep seating of bullets and then take one of your expanded cases and just run it in there without a bullet at this very critical time you don't want to feel any dragging because if you do it's because what's happening is you're closing up the bell and when you close up the bell early you're going to wind up shaving cast lead or powder coat and you see here there isn't any shaving so you back out your seating die back out your sitting stem and right here the important thing is you're not getting any dragging you're not getting any kind of closing up of your bell because if you do if you feel a little bit dragging right here and then you're losing you're losing your seat that means you're going to shave lead or powder coat no problem with the rcbs bullet seating die now this kind of dragging is a problem for some lead eyes we've run into so that you're going to shave lead with a lee die and the way to get around that is you take the next larger caliber bullet sitting die and use that one to seat the bullets that you're having problems shaving on and you'll solve your problem that way you can do the same thing with rcbs if you have the next larger size caliber but no need if the bullet seating die is proper for cast bullets as you see here the problem with the ones that do drag when you put the belt case in is because those were designed for jacketed bullets not cast but with the cowboy dies no problem so we were seating this round nose 454 bullet for cap and rex what you do is run that in and lower the stem until it touches the bullet and then see how much more you gotta go give it a couple of turns and you see there another turn and a half and a little bit farther now you got the seating depth where you want it so then back out the sitting stem and lower the crimp lord it died but there it is that's the crimp engaging give it about old quarter turn get some crimp now if we were doing a crimping groove we'd be roll crimping it into the crimping groove but because this is a 45 acp bullet we just want to close it up and crimp it with a mild roll crimp into the lead and you see no lead being shaved captain rex you're in business with the rcbs cowboy die set with your four five four four five five bullets this kind of reminds us of some of the factory rounds we've seen in the past for 45 colt but we'll keep this one as a dummy i might want to load some of those round nose bullets in the 45 colt i sure have a lot of those so how cool is this we already have our crimp setup put our dummy in for our 200 grain blue bullet semi-wide cutter run that down we'll back out this seating stem there's the crimp we lower the seating stem until it touches the bullet and that die is set up to load the blue bullet with this crimp and that seating depth we're in business we'll go ahead and run a powder charge now 10.2 grains of herco and then we'll go ahead and seat those bullets so there's our hornady dispensing 10.2 grains of herco powder now we like hercoat powder because it's medium burning and flaky and fills the case nicely so herco it is 10.2 grains so we dispense the charge take a bullet slip it in go ahead and seat the bullet and crimp no shaving and there it is nice round all ready to go we'll repeat that 50 times the beauty of this two-step is that you don't even have to look when you're putting the bullet into the mouth of the case you just feel it it just kind of goes in and hits that step that seat like this you just go like this and you know it's square so before we do 50 of them let's find out if these function fine drop them in listen for the snake they're sneaking real good let's do that last one again that's pretty good functioning let's drop them out and they all fall out on their own incidentally here's a 45 cowboy special round loaded with the bigger 454 bullet and it drops in with a snake also as you hear functions fine and drops out without any trouble so the cowboy round loads fine so i've got report to you that the 45 cowboy special loads fine with the rcbs 45 colt reloading dies however you needed to use the lee factory crimp die to apply the crimp 45 cold seating die by rcdbs doesn't crimp the 45 cowboy special well there they all are and this die set performed beautifully the rcbs dies performed beautifully

Channel: FortuneCookie45LC

Views: 10,764

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Id: 2M7ojIuRst4

Length: 19min 12sec (1152 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 11 2020