OzFclass

One wonders how the internal cone is cut within that collet. It must be close to the shoulder hitting the collet which is bad news.

OK - at least this is positive information.

Try the washer trick limiting case entry as a temporary experiment. Confirm that It should work.

You can then figure out what you do after that. I don't think you will be satisfied with a washer as a long term solution.

Peter Smith.

pjifl wrote:One wonders how the internal cone is cut within that collet. It must be close to the shoulder hitting the collet which is bad news

Peter Smith.

Is it?
Kind if takes me back to the question I posed a week or so ago.
I still figure that if you get it just right it's not so much bumping the shoulder as maintaining case dimensions.

They should have clearance between the base of the neck and bottom of sizing area, however I would have thought 2mm to be excessive so I disassembled 3 of mine and found from .2 to 2mm and the 2 larger gaps were 7mm and 284 ??? the washer is not a practical solution merely a diagnosis tool, either contact lee for a replacement collet or machine up a spacer to a hard push fit over the bottom of the collet, there should be enough protruding after contact with the forcing cone to hold it, I have actually considered making a full collet die cut with a finish reamer to test the fls effect, too many projects not enough floods

Well there you go Tim, it does pass right through the collet area. As i mentioned previously try a washer over the case in the press and adjust the die accordingly. If you still have neck tension issues polish the rod as i mentioned, this will save over working the cone area and squashing the neck brass, been there done that. Less force is kinder to all working parts concerned. Hope you get it sorted. The decapping pin should have enough length to tolerate the washer thickness required to contact your case neck to the top.
cheers Pete

Well there you go Tim, it does pass right through the collet area. As i mentioned previously try a washer over the case in the press and adjust the die accordingly. If you still have neck tension issues polish the rod as i mentioned, this will save over working the cone area and squashing the neck brass, been there done that. Less force is kinder to all working parts concerned. Hope you get it sorted. The decapping pin should have enough length to tolerate the washer thickness required to contact your case neck to the top.
cheers Pete

I did the washer trick which worked sort of, now it only sizes about 3.5mm of the neck.
I’ve emailed lee to see if they can send a new die.
Problem is it’s a custom die which I had to send cases and a projectile for them to make....
The full neck can be sized but I have to do it in 2 passes and change the die setting.
Lee collet project not off to a good start

I ordered a 6x47 die at the same time and it’s too short as well...
Not as bad but still a pain in the rear, just lucky I guess.

Mines the same Tim, glad you picked it up!!

First pic is brand new virgin brass



Second is brass fired several times, straight out of the chamber (not body sized)

Are you using the shellholder Lee supplied?

Those pics above are with their shellholder. It’s visually worse with my Redding shellholders

I hadn’t picked it up on my brass, sized neck in my brass is 309 (chamber is 313) the belled out mouth measures 310 and wasn’t readily apparent to the naked eye.

Hey Ben
The shell holder they supplied was similar to mine.
I’ll see what the answer is from lee and will ask for 3 inners

It is a real shame you have had such a runaround with the collet die option.

One thing that may be worth considering at this point is just how far down the neck do you want to size, throating distance and bullet seating beyond any potential donuts !

Peter Smith.

Thanks for your input Peter,
Do you think 4mm will be enough of the neck sized?
That would be max with the current collet

If you store the ammo carefully in individual slots and load singly in a target rifle, I believe 4 mm would be adequate. Magazine fed in an SLR would be a very different thing. You can easily measure runout.

Perhaps a bit more would be nice but why not try them on a target - that is all that counts.

This is not to excuse what seems substandard manufacturing of the collet die.

Peter Smith.

For what it's worth, when I load heavies in a 308 I don't have 4mm of bearing surface in the case. Concentrisity is less than a thou a they seem to land pretty close to one another. I have a barrel with 300thou of freebore that shoots 155.5 that have less than 2mm in the case and a leap of faith to the lands. They too perform pretty well on the target face.
As Peter says, the target is the truth teller.

Like the 30 wolfpup, longer neck grab just helps rough handling, actually concentricity is probably assisted by that short grab as it may self straighten, but really if it ain’t broke don’t fix it