Body Die - To Hone or not to Hone?

[daj]

Thanks RD. I've heard that your method is good for removing 1 to 10 thou, so working softly softly with a telescopic gauge should yield the desired results, and I have a good spare die if it doesn't.

David

[XCALIBRE]

All is not what appears to be. For starters I form and make my own wildcat cases in 6mm. and 6.5mm. I purchased a form die, a trim die and a full length die all the same calibre from Redding. Careful, then very careful, then extremely very careful measurement of die base to shoulder revealed no two dies were the same. A variation of .014" existed. Further investigation confirmed this along with a concentricity of .005" runout in one Die. From that point on I made all my future dies from my custom chamber reamers, including bullet seater. A suggested tip to assist in bumping the shoulder is to hold the cam-lock of your press closed for 10 seconds to relax the brass spring tension within the shoulder. At times you can gain an extra .0015" pending state of brass. Worth trying.

[daj]

XCAL,

I never tried holding the press closed. Normally with a hardened case I'll just run it through again until it sizes. If it doesn't (rare), I bin it. Annealing every 4th reload helps in this regard too.

After "extremely very carefully" using grinding paste on a patch on a shaped dowel, I removed approx. 0.0001" from the die in what seemed like an eternity. It does have a nice finish though.

This weekend I get serious and use a FlexHone.

[Neil lesslie]

Matching a Redding body die to chamber sounds great.i took a cast of my chamber and want to adjust my die a little by honing but I can't seem to find a 3 stone Horner small enough.i thought about a flex hone but apparently they don't remove any material.
Can anyone tell me what type of hone they used and where to purchase one.
Cheers
Neil