ORIGINAL: BigBob .30-06
big country,
I switched to a universal depriming die a long time ago. It lets me knock out the old primer without working the brass in any way. After I clean the primer pockets they go into the tumbler, When they go into a sizing die they're already clean. Almost all my sizing dies are Redding competition dies with bushing and donot have an expander ball. For those dies that do have the expander ball, I adjust the expander stem so that once the case starts down in the die, the exbander ball comes in contact with the case neck. Once the case neck is still in the sizing portion of the die, and on the expander ball at the same time, I tighten the stem in place. I never have to worry about the neck being pulled out of alignment by the exbander ball again.
Up until last Year, I used to do that bigbob. But started measruing the shoulders. I saw the shoulders varied sometimes by .003" sometimes. Only explanation was the ball pulling back thru. So I set up a new technique after reading about it. I deprime in one step, I pull out the expander ball and FL Size in another and lastly I push the expander thru (not pull) as a separate step but don't push the cartridge all the way to squeeze the neck again. John barsness said it might help runout, but I found it kept the shoulders stable and each one measured the exact same. The shoulder placement was more important than runout.
I know I am probably wasting time doing it this way. but I love to experiement.