First step with the 444 Marlin

[Rodsmith]

I finally finished off the top of my garage to be my "dog house" Set up the reloading area and thought I would check out the strength of the bench on a few of the 444 cases I got off ebay. Didi the FL size and assembled the Lee case length trimmer and found it would not fit into the resized neck. Didnt have time to go over all the variables as I had a 4 hour ride home to start. Question is should I run the case length proceedure prior to the the case FL sizing? Or do I have a bad cutter? I am taking the mic back up on my next trip as I needed it here to measure up a flyrod blank.

Nope, it should work fine with FL sizing then trimming. Better use your calibers the pilot size and neck size. Maybe its your FL sizer.

[Rodsmith]

Thanks bigcountry
My 35 & 270 did not have this prob. Will take up the mic's over the 4th (next time up in the mountains) and check the entire set out.

Usually there is alot of slop in those pilots. Has to be to accomadate different expander balls and different dies after FL sizing.

[Big Guy01]

I have been loading my .444 for over 30 years. I always trim my cases and champher them before I resize them.Thats the way that the Speer handloading manual recomends for all calibers.