Solitary Man

Since I started using Lee collet neck dies I haven't had any problems with runout. Plusthis diehas a couple of other advantages: 1) no case lube is required and 2) it works theneck a minimum amount which helps to extendthe number of reloadings before neck tension becomes an issue. Of course a good seater die goes a long way toward making straight ammo too. I prefer the Redding Competition seaters.

bigcountry

Oh yea, I like the lee collets too. I usually have to do some work on em however to get the tension I like.

Solitary Man

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.

haugenna

To all,

I am new to reloading, what is runout and what effect does it have on shooting?

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.

Solitary Man

haugenna, the simplest way I can define runout is to say that it refers to how straight or crooked a rifle cartidge is. Cartridges with less runout arestraighter than those withmore runout. One way for you to see this is to take a cartridge and roll it across a flat surface, like a table. While doing this, carfully observe the tip of the bullet.If the tip end of the bullet wobbles as you roll the cartridge, then there is a certain amount of runout present in that cartridge. Another term used in describing whether a cartridge is straight or not is concentricity. A cartridge with little or no runout is said to beconcentric. There are tools for measuring concentricity. My favorite is the one made by Sinclair Int'l.

In practice, cartridges with less runout, those that are concentric, generally tend to shoot more accurately than those with more runout because they are in better alignment with the axis of the rifle's bore. So, if shooting the smallest groups possible is your desire, it's more likely that you'll be able to do it if your ammo has little or no runout. Of course it is nice to shoot the smallest possible groups on paper, I know I enjoy it, but I really can't imagine a little runout ever causing you to miss an animal unless you're shootin' at them way, way out there.

bigcountry

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.

James B

I started reloading in 1975. I have yet to this day, even given a thought to runout. I guess it has never given me any trouble.

biggunz.45-70

James,
Have you ever measured the run out of your reloads? I was a bit skeptical about the whole thing until I started sorting ammo and shooting groups. I now check every big game round I load. I don't hunt with anything with more than .003" run out. I havea mauser in .25-06 that shoots .75" groups with ammo having less than .003" run out and 1.25" with stuff measuring .005" or more.

bigcountry

Well, James anyone can build ammo. Some of us look for different things in reloading. So I guess this post wont be of much interest for you.