Somewhere around RC36-40 carbide just seems to give up the ghost, in certain steels. For example, the drops a fellow sent me are marked RC37-ish, one set is 416 the other is 17-4
I'll have to go down and check but if memory serves the 416 cut and the 17-4 just screeched
This ties in with another post concerning opening sizer dies. I have some carbide insert tooling that cuts Redding dies leaving a glassy-smooth finish. But the case is thin enough that I've cut thru it.
I have many other dies to try cutting and so far nothing carbide has done the trick. I have tried some solid ground carbide as well as affixing a carbide 3/8 endmill sideways
I've always heard of "ceramic" and "boron" as being suitable for stuff harder thn RC40-50 but all the tooling I've seen make it look as though the product is "sintered" or somesuch and needs a lot of bottom support and near vertical support below the cutting edge. ie "overhang" must be minimal to account for low tensile strength.
I've pretty much stopped modifying dies because of this, preferring to just whack out an interim die to use un-hardened while waiting the (year or more??) for a die to be made. It's a pain right now because I've developed 4 different chamberings in the last 6mo as I'm recording youtube vids.....kinda' documenting the "wildcatting" process. I'd like to videotape exactly how I bore out my dies but at this point my success rate is about two dies forward and one die back
In other words I've screwed up as many as I've succeeded with. You give me a 300WSM Redding die and I'll modify it perfectly 9/10 of the time but run it in to a 300 RUM depth and things get wikky-wakk
Give me a Forster die, or RCBS and I'll call in every banshee for 6-8 miles
Little 6BR stuff? PPC? I'm OK but not great....depth easy but now diameter becomes a problem