Lyman dies

[Iron Worker]

Cudos for Sportsmen Warehouse for letting me return Lyman dies with out receipt. 22-250 I was seating 53gr hornady V-max and the design of there seating dies distorts the bullet badly just below the red tip. I exchanged them for Redding dies . Far Superior design. Called up Lyman and tech never returned my call . Who uses Lyman dies ?

 

[Trickymissfit]

Cudos for Sportsmen Warehouse for letting me return Lyman dies with out receipt. 22-250 I was seating 53gr hornady V-max and the design of there seating dies distorts the bullet badly just below the red tip. I exchanged them for Redding dies . Far Superior design. Called up Lyman and tech never returned my call . Who uses Lyman dies ?

I use several sets of their hand gun dies for cast bullets. Have not found a better die in my lifetime. The seating stem issue may show up on the Redding die set or just about anyother brand as well. It's the shape of the bullet with it's high B/C that's causing your issues.

As for the tech not returning your call, all I can say is wait till you get a bad Redding die. These guys never made anything bad, and all you gotta do is ask them! Actually I'd have to say RCBS has the best cutomer relationship of any of the die manufacturers. Forster's not bad, but sometimes you have to prove you have a problem. I did once with a hand full of lock rings that were not square (maybe .005") I sent the guy a couple of them, and called me to apollogise. They sent me about a dozen new lock rings that were right. I had two friends that built 6BR rifles on Remington actions. Ron Pence cut the barrels and chambered them (a lot of folks think a Pence barrel is the Rolls Royce of gun barrels). They both ordered Lapua or Norma brass (couple hundred cases a piece), and had Sinclair send them Redding Dies (their best). The reamer was Pence's personal reamer, and a chamber cut with it will place in the top ten in any IBS meet on the planet. One of the guys brings me in a bag with a dozen or so cases complete ruined. Then the next day he brings in another handfull from the otherguy. He calls Sinclair about the issue as it looked to me like the neck wasn't cut right in the one die set I got a good look at. Sinclair trades die sets with both of them, and they promptly ruin another handfull of cases. One of them calls Redding to get some help, and the guy said it was the rifle chamber and not their die. B.S.! So the following Saturday they drive up to Sinclair, and Sinclair calls them, and they blew him off saying the chamber was bad (the cases had never been chambered). So Eric takes a new die set off the shelf and promptly ruins four or five cases out of his stock! Calls Redding again, and is flatly told they don't make bad dies and it's their problem. Eric pulls every 6BR Redding die set they have and all of them ruin cases. This time Fred calls them and reads the riot act to them, but the guys still say it's their fault. So Fred sends back four or five die sets and the cases. Turns out every 6BR die they built upto that time was junk. They made a die set for one of them, and the other just took a Forster die set out of stock (which worked better anyway). Later I saw a similar thing with a plain jane 30-06 die set from them, and even later I saw it with a couple 6PPC die sets. As for the ruined 6BR cases, Redding said they were not interested in replacing them, and the two guys have not spent a dime at Sinclair or Redding again. Now everybody will make something bad at onetime or another, but 97% will own upto it.
gary

 

[Iron Worker]

Well that's interesting story. No such thing as perfection on this side of eternity. No the bullet seating stem on the redding is entirely different. I've already put it to use it seats the bullet with out blemish,so does the RCBC .

 

[boomtube]

First, a seating plug does not represent the whole seating die, the seating die does not represent the entire die set.

Bullets profiles differ - a lot - and no seating plug can possibly 'fit' the ogive of all bullets but there are several simple ways we can tweak them to perfectly accommidate any bullet we may wish. Anyway, small seater plug rings on the ogive of a bullet looks odd but generally make no difference at all in effect.

Statiscially, a single test sample of any manufactored product proves nothing. I have a lot of conventional dies of all brands and many cartridges, some are better than others but they are all good so, after some 45+ years of reloading with dozens of die sets, I have no favorite brand (but I did when I was still green and it was Lyman). I soon learned to select individual dies from different sets to make the die set I want and that almost invariably requires a mixture because, on average, I have found no brand of dies or sets of dies to be automatically superior to any others. There is no assurance of anything simply by the cost or color of the box, I've found as much variation between individual dies of the same brand as between brands.

(That's for conventional die sets, the two specific exceptions to that general rule are the competition sets from Forster and Redding. However, the advantages of them are not great and vary depending exactly which individual die they are being compared to; a "good" conventional set will do as well as a vastly more costly set. And the most perfect die set ever assembled will be negated by sloppy user technique.)

 

[Trickymissfit]

Well that's interesting story. No such thing as perfection on this side of eternity. No the bullet seating stem on the redding is entirely different. I've already put it to use it seats the bullet with out blemish,so does the RCBC .

anybody and everybody will make a bad part sooner or later. Just happens, but you must own upto your mistakes. Otherwise the consumer will go someplace else with his business.

Here's something interesting. Many of you know that I like the 6/250, and I shoot the Ackley verysion with 105 grain AMAX bullets and a slightly longer Sierra. I have several boxes of loaded rounds that I didn't reload, but were done with my die set (Redding). The actuall load never interested me, and I planed on just shooting them (I like H1000 powder and these had Retumbo powder). Looking at the bullets and measuring the seating depth, they all were pretty consistent (+/- .001"). Yet 80% of the bullets had a mark from the seater stem plug on them (not real deep or anything, but there was a tell tale ring on them). I'll simply polish the plug a little bit, and maybe change the angle a degree or two. Better yet I can buy a new plug from Redding for the type of bullets
gary

 

[Iron Worker]

Ok the Lyman service department Tech called me a minute ago. He was very friendly and" mentioned that they were aware of the problem". He also said" I could send the part and sample bullets back and they'd fix it. Or I could drill it out a little bit". But I already returned the die set. So for the record : Lyman did call and offered to rectify the problem............ Gary sounds like a cool cartridge that 6/250 happy shooting !

 

[Trickymissfit]

First, a seating plug does not represent the whole seating die, the seating die does not represent the entire die set.

Bullets profiles differ - a lot - and no seating plug can possibly 'fit' the ogive of all bullets but there are several simple ways we can tweak them to perfectly accommidate any bullet we may wish. Anyway, small seater plug rings on the ogive of a bullet looks odd but generally make no difference at all in effect.

Statiscially, a single test sample of any manufactored product proves nothing. I have a lot of conventional dies of all brands and many cartridges, some are better than others but they are all good so, after some 45+ years of reloading with dozens of die sets, I have no favorite brand (but I did when I was still green and it was Lyman). I soon learned to select individual dies from different sets to make the die set I want and that almost invariably requires a mixture because, on average, I have found no brand of dies or sets of dies to be automatically superior to any others. There is no assurance of anything simply by the cost or color of the box, I've found as much variation between individual dies of the same brand as between brands.

(That's for conventional die sets, the two specific exceptions to that general rule are the competition sets from Forster and Redding. However, the advantages of them are not great and vary depending exactly which individual die they are being compared to; a "good" conventional set will do as well as a vastly more costly set. And the most perfect die set ever assembled will be negated by sloppy user technique.)

all the Lyman dies I use (with one exception) are for handguns and cast bullets. Seating and sizing wise they are no better than anybody elses stuff, but I like the way they crimp and open the case body to seat the cast bullet better. Also for the revolver folks (I'm one), Lyman still sells steel dies for the revolver cartridges. I have opened up more than one sizer to give me just .002" clearence inside the chamber. The guns are more accurate this way and the cases last much longer. Doing some measuring with a 45LC revolvers (six of them), I found that the best I could get was about .0075" of clearence in the bore! (using RCBS, Lyman, and Redding sizers) I learned from a well known shooter about honeing the I.D. to fit the chambers, and that a carbide die does not size all they way down the case like I wanted to. The rest was an easy fix as all the chambers in my Blackhawks were virtually identical. I did lay my hands on a couple 270 WBY mag die sets from Lyman and RCBS. The Lymans were not so hot, and the RCBS was better. Later I get a Hornaday set and I liked the RCBS better. Even later I find a new Forster set at a gun show, and have never looked back. I now need to get one of the Innovative Tech sizer dies to finish out that system.
gary

 

[Trickymissfit]

Ok the Lyman service department Tech called me a minute ago. He was very friendly and" mentioned that they were aware of the problem". He also said" I could send the part and sample bullets back and they'd fix it. Or I could drill it out a little bit". But I already returned the die set. So for the record : Lyman did call and offered to rectify the problem............ Gary sounds like a cool cartridge that 6/250 happy shooting !

it's a good round, and cases are real easy to form. But it also has one draw back. The neck's a little too short, thuse being a little hard on barrels. I'm going to build another one, but this time ream it off a 6mm Ackley reamer run in short. It's pretty much the samething but much longer (all Ackley rounds use the same taper). I may take it a step further and set it up to use the same .243 Win case I now use trimmed back to about 2.015". I know where a reamer is, and I can buy a 6XC seater plug from Redding or Forster to build the seater. The sizer won't be that hard to do as well, and I'll probably opt for a Wilson for range work.
gary

 

[boomtube]

"Lyman dies... for handguns and cast bullets. ... I like the way they...open the case body to seat the cast bullet better.."

Me too. For all straight walled cases and as an extra option for bottle necks, Lyman uses their "M" two step plus flare expander design which is excellant for both cast and jacketed bullet seating; in the world of conventional dies for either straight wall or bottle neck expanders that's the best design available. I know Redding has copied that expander design for their handgun dies and I think RCBS has recently done so as well. But, other than the M expander, I find no great or consistant funcitonal difference between any brands of conventional dies.

I love to play with my old 40X chambered for the (Walker) 6mm International with an original 2 oz trigger and a 24x Remington target scope in Unertl mounts that I bought from Mike Walker himself. The cartridge is a .250 Savage case sized to .24 and the shoulder set back about .1" so the necks are plenty long. Groups are consistanly at or under 3/8", I don't count the occasional smaller groups as anything but the statistical annomilies they are.