Not even sure i am asking this right. But i see people talking about having custom brass forming dies made from spent casings from their rifles. Where do you get that done, Anyone have a name to a guy or place that does it ?
Custom brass resizing die made for your gun
- Thread starter tiger49931
- Start date
Forster will custom hone their dies if you send them fire formed cases and a couple of your preferred projectiles. https://www.forsterproducts.com/product/full-length-sizing-dies/
i believe Whidden gun works does as well. https://www.whiddengunworks.com/custom-reloading-dies/
As does Neil Jones. https://www.neiljones.com
there's also Alan Warner dies. https://www.warner-tool.com/reloading-dies/
and i believe Harrell's does so as well. http://harrellsprec.com/index.php/products/full-length-die
i believe Whidden gun works does as well. https://www.whiddengunworks.com/custom-reloading-dies/
As does Neil Jones. https://www.neiljones.com
there's also Alan Warner dies. https://www.warner-tool.com/reloading-dies/
and i believe Harrell's does so as well. http://harrellsprec.com/index.php/products/full-length-die
Last edited:
Depends on what you're looking for. For wildcats, Whidden is pretty much the best way to go, and I think Forster will handle them as well. You're probably seeing people having their sizing dies custom-honed to their chosen neck dimensions and Forster is the most common for that.
Alan & Dan Warner (Warner Tool Conpany) make pretty awesome gear.
Unless you have your own reamer so able to get “exactly” same chamber, some advantages of custom dies go away when chamber dies were made for is shot out.
Unless you have your own reamer so able to get “exactly” same chamber, some advantages of custom dies go away when chamber dies were made for is shot out.
This right here. If you are going down the rabbit hole go all the way and purchase the reamer and make both. Use the reamer for the next barrel so you are not making another set of matching dies.
When I first started on my journey down the accuracy path I pulled up at custom dies. I did, however, get the mechanical drawings of the reamer that was used for my chamber. I confirmed it was correct by measuring my fire formed brass. I made notes and used it for setting my dies. Worked out very well but wasn’t the ultimate option.
SAAMI, min-SAAMI, custom. Those will all have different tolerances and dimensions (obviously) that a reamer drawing can help with. Dies have to be set so just because you have them doesn’t mean they automatically make brass how you personally want it to fit in the chamber (slight crush fit, etc). Any real data you have on your chamber helps the cause.
I was under the impression that the finish reamer for your chamber wouldn't be a good pick for making F/L sizing dies - wouldn't be able to get enough squeeze at various points along the body. Or am I missing something?
You need a different reamer to make the fl sizing die. You use your chamber reamer for the seating die. I'm just looking into doing this. I'm going to buy my own reamer. Still trying to figure out what I do about the fl die reamer
I shoot 600 yard f class and the seating die is very common to have made from your reamer. The vast majority of shooters I shoot with do not use custom FL dies because we all use FL die and a expander in separate operation so you can control neck better. I’m not sure what advantage a custom fl die might have over this other than maybeee working brass slightly less
I can see 3 possibilities. 1 possibly inducing less runout. This is the claim anyway. 2 working brass less. And 3. This is what I'm most interested in when using a Dillon. Because it works the brass less it will be putting less pressure on the ram causing less flex and more consistant everything. All just theory that I haven't confirmed but I see no downside other than expense
I understand your point. I’ve seen some unbelievable benchrest and f class groups in my day without the use of custom FL die so I won’t say it’s not worth the trouble but you need to be shooting some very small groups at distance to really have any effect. I would personally move away from the Dillon and use a single stage for sizing (FL and expanding in two operations) and then an arbor press for seating as that is what I’m familiar with in f class and benchrest where I shoot
I probably would stick with that as well jf I was shooting f class and bench rest where your round count is verry few. Meanwhile im shooting prs where matches are 2 to 300 rounds and I shoot about that many per week training as well. Hopefully moving to custom dies on a dillon will allow me to save many hours every week without loosing any accuracy compared to my current single stage set up
The perceived benefit of the custom dies is usually either when a) you have a non-standard cartridge configuration, and off-the-shelf dies won't cover it, or b) when you have, for whatever reason, a mis-match between your chamber and your dies to where the standard dies don't *quite* provide enough sizing at some point along the cartridge case.
It has zero fuck-all to do with what sport you happen to be playing.
I've shot more than a little F-class over the years, and having 500+ pieces of brass in play for one caliber, one gun, was not uncommon. That was just about enough to get me through the times when I had multi-day tournaments back-to-back on adjacent weekends - or the times when they weren't *quite* that close together, but I actually had to work for a living in between.
Probably 99% of that was done with factory dies - mostly Redding Type 'S' F/L bushing sizers, and Forster Ultra BR seaters. I did have a custom sizer made off fired brass from my chamber... the gunsmith was out of Newlon blanks and tried making it from a piece of a barrel blank. No bueno. Took it back to be repolished several times, still didn't work as well as my Redding die. Then I had a custom 21st Century seater made to exactly match the ogive of a 200.20X bullet... damn near threw that thing through the wall more than once because it was too tight in places it didn't need to be (and yes, it was made from fired cases from my chamber). Sent it back and forth a few times, couldn't get them to make it the way I wanted, so I ended up having a (different) local 'smith open it up and do some other mods to it.
By way of contrast, when I shot some NBRSA Varmint For Score with a .30 BR, I had 31 pieces of brass. They got F/L sized every time, in a Redding Type 'S' F/L die, because the way Redding cut those dies, and the way the chamber was cut, were very, very close.
On the other hand... I've had some interesting experiences over the years with loading .308 Winchester. For the longest time I was in the 'new barrel, new brass' club, simply because I had some bad experiences with brass from one barrel not fitting in the next, no matter how much I shoved the shoulder back. Come to find out, one chamber (usually the first one) had a big ass to it, and the factory dies couldn't reach down far enough to re-size the case web back down to within spec so they'd fit the new chamber. Same reamer, different person setting it up, different fired brass dimensions as a result. Later found it could be 'fixed' (sometimes) with judicious use of a small base die - but once in a while even that wasn't quite enough. A ring die, which sizes *only* the case web, did the trick... but those things are damn hard to find and not cheap when you can. Another 'symptom' of this sort of mis-match is when you get 'clickers'.
As it happens, I'm in the market (or will be, in the very near future) for a set of custom dies. Mainly because it's for a .338LM Improved, and those dies *aren't* readily available off the shelf. Technically, I suppose there are a few places that might make them in limited runs (Redding, etc.) but with the wait time and cost involved, it's about a wash to just get custom dies made through Whidden.
It has zero fuck-all to do with what sport you happen to be playing.
I've shot more than a little F-class over the years, and having 500+ pieces of brass in play for one caliber, one gun, was not uncommon. That was just about enough to get me through the times when I had multi-day tournaments back-to-back on adjacent weekends - or the times when they weren't *quite* that close together, but I actually had to work for a living in between.
Probably 99% of that was done with factory dies - mostly Redding Type 'S' F/L bushing sizers, and Forster Ultra BR seaters. I did have a custom sizer made off fired brass from my chamber... the gunsmith was out of Newlon blanks and tried making it from a piece of a barrel blank. No bueno. Took it back to be repolished several times, still didn't work as well as my Redding die. Then I had a custom 21st Century seater made to exactly match the ogive of a 200.20X bullet... damn near threw that thing through the wall more than once because it was too tight in places it didn't need to be (and yes, it was made from fired cases from my chamber). Sent it back and forth a few times, couldn't get them to make it the way I wanted, so I ended up having a (different) local 'smith open it up and do some other mods to it.
By way of contrast, when I shot some NBRSA Varmint For Score with a .30 BR, I had 31 pieces of brass. They got F/L sized every time, in a Redding Type 'S' F/L die, because the way Redding cut those dies, and the way the chamber was cut, were very, very close.
On the other hand... I've had some interesting experiences over the years with loading .308 Winchester. For the longest time I was in the 'new barrel, new brass' club, simply because I had some bad experiences with brass from one barrel not fitting in the next, no matter how much I shoved the shoulder back. Come to find out, one chamber (usually the first one) had a big ass to it, and the factory dies couldn't reach down far enough to re-size the case web back down to within spec so they'd fit the new chamber. Same reamer, different person setting it up, different fired brass dimensions as a result. Later found it could be 'fixed' (sometimes) with judicious use of a small base die - but once in a while even that wasn't quite enough. A ring die, which sizes *only* the case web, did the trick... but those things are damn hard to find and not cheap when you can. Another 'symptom' of this sort of mis-match is when you get 'clickers'.
As it happens, I'm in the market (or will be, in the very near future) for a set of custom dies. Mainly because it's for a .338LM Improved, and those dies *aren't* readily available off the shelf. Technically, I suppose there are a few places that might make them in limited runs (Redding, etc.) but with the wait time and cost involved, it's about a wash to just get custom dies made through Whidden.
