RCBS Comp. Seater die?

J

Jbordi

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Does anybody have any experience with the RCBS comp. seater die? Are they worth the money? How is the concentricity?

Jarrod
 
Jarrod ...

Does anybody have any experience with the RCBS comp. seater die? Are they worth the money? How is the concentricity? Jarrod

I had one once. Not the greatest. Get yourself a Wilson Seater die with or without the micrometer top and you'll be glad you did. :)
 

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In the Precision Shooting Reloading Manual (that I forgot who I loaned to) there is an article in which the concentricity of ammunition loaded with the RCBS Competition seater was compared with that obtained by using other seating dies. The so called Competition Seater did not do as well as the standard RCBS seater. If you want to upgrade, and still use a threaded die, the Forster Ultra Seater does a pretty good job.
 
RCBS comp. seater does as good as any other comp. seater die, but, all competition seater dies are only as good as the brass that fits the seating die. Loose fit means bad seating and big concentricity......tight fit means good seating and low concentricity, in other words, the chamber and sizing die must match up to the seater for a tight fit, then seater will produce good ammo............Don
 
I have one for 222 Remington. You can see the buillets wabble when you roll the loaded ammo on a glass table top. Needless to say I think it is expensive junk.

If you are looking for screw in dies, get the Redding Competition Collet dies and you will be happy.

George
 
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Thanks for all of the input. Leaning towards the Forster Ultra Seater or the Redding. Mainly looking for an upgrade for threaded dies.

Jarrod
 
Jarrod ,

I use both Forster & Redding, but the Redding doesn't handle long bearing surface projectiles with compressed or full case loads particularly well.

It's about tolerances & the fact that their plunger is set to meet the projectile a tad lower down the ogive than some. As a result, the plunger can expand & gall the bore of the floating insert if it's made to work a little too hard. When that happened to me, Redding was prompt in replacing the plunger & insert but I have heeded their suggestion & only use it with standard loads now.

John
 
Hi Jarrod mine works great!

I just bought the RCBS Competition seater die and mic and am very pleased. I compared the concentricity of some factory loaded Remington Express CoreLoct 150gr in .308 and rolled it (5 randomly picked rounds) in a "V" block and checked the runout with a dial indicator and measured .002"-.008". Then I measured what I handloaded with Lapua brass that was neck sized with Lee collet dies to .002" neck spring and loaded 168gr Sierra Match Kings. the same measurement was only .001"-.002". Now I am very picky about these handloads for the bench and will seat, turn 120 deg. seat and turn again. I don't know how much or even if this helps, but I have the time and it can't hurt.
 
Seater dies

Jarrod: I have and use both the Wilson seaters with an arbor press and the 7/8x14 threaded seaters, and for the threaded, I do prefer the Forster Ultra Micrometer Seater over the Redding. And it costs approx. $25 less.
 
Jarrod:
I was using Wilson seaters and became frustrated by bullet spring back. All too often I would mike the bulllets and find a few that there significantly longer than they should be. This after mikeing and sorting my bulllets.

My solution was to buy any used Redding Comp seaters to save money and have my smith replace the inner sleeve with one cut with the same reamer that cut my chamber. The components align perfectly and when measuring length, the results are within my expected variation of +/- .001 of the expected length.

Hope this helps.
Frank
 
I have a RCBS comp seater die for my 308. It takes brass with .001" neck runout and manages to seat the bullet in it with .005" runout. Not super impressed. My redding dies in other calibers do better.
 
If you want to do a real test sometime, use two different dies to seat the same bullets in sized cases that are of similar straightness, preferably with a lot of neck tension, with flat base bullets. Heck, with 55 gr Sierra BTs I can load fairly straight ammo in expanded and turned .220 Russian cases with a 6PPC Wilson seater. Some jobs are too easy to show much of a difference.
 
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