"Boomtube, Aesthetics means nothing when it comes to reloading dies, all that matters is the ability to make reliable consistent ammo, whether it is for competition or hunting, especially long range hunting which is what this forum is about. That is what I meant by the quality of the Gold Medal dies not how they look."
Good. I'm sure you know that a lot of people DO judge a book by it's cover and dies by smooth, shiney surfaces and clean knurling.
I base my comments on measuring the output from a few dozen dies of different makes and calibers. I have found the Reddings and Forsters to be equal but I obviously haven't tested them all. Nor, point of fact, have I measured the output from the high cost RCBS dies at all, neither I nor anyone I could borrow them from are willing to pay for the things! I have examined the designs tho, and judge what I see in view of what I learned with others. I really don't think there is enough difference in sizers, per se, to make a difference between brands. I do like the expander results from Forster, Lee's FL and neck/collet and Lyman's M dies. I dispise all ball ttype expanders because they invariably bend necks a little during withdrawal.
In my tests, I didn't find ANY average improvement in short sliding bullet alignment sleeves over more conventional seaters. Yeah, the short guide sleeves do, or may, make it a little easier to put bullets in place but they don't come close to the improvement Forster/Redding's full length sleeves and straight line seating accomplishes. They, and they alone, replicate hand seating dies.
So, since you have machinest skills and the dies too, I wonder how many of those sets you have used, have you gaged the concentricity of the average cartridges from your dies and, if so, what differences did you find over the Reddings? In other words, since it isn't appearance, why do you say RCBS GM dies are superiour?
