Know what you mean. Ialways give the Lee dies a going over to remove tooling marks and burrs incertain critical areas when I first buy them. I alsopolish the mandrel down by about .001" to give a little better bullet grip.

I don't know when these dies were patented, but my hope is that some day when the patent expires, if it hasn't already, that one of the other companies like Redding will make a die based on this concept. It's really a great idea and I believe Redding would make a better product than Lee. At least in my experience, Redding, Forster and some other companies put more quality into their products than does Lee.