• If you are having trouble changng your password please click here for help.

What is the Best 308 resizing die?

I’m at a loss on this. I’ll think about this tonight and do a little research and see if I can come up with anything and send it to you in the am!
 
Bullet is hitting the lands I bet

The other thing I was thinking is that the brass coming out of one of those guns has been fire-formed and the shoulder needs to be bumped back a bit more.

... I thought I might have worn it out.

Not very likely.

The case gauge is a Hornady, part number 380716.

Should be fine then.

I dunno. It might be that one of the chambers in the mix is fireforming the brass and the shoulder that results needs to be bumped back a bit more aggressively. I'm reluctant to recommend you spend a bunch of money, but this would almost certainly show you exactly what was going on:


If you have a good set of calipers, you could compare most of the dimensions that matter to see what differs between a plunkable case and a non-plunkable one. Base case diameter being one, and shoulder length being the other.
 
Here is part of what's frustrating me. First picture is of a loaded round sticking out of the case gauge. This round will not chamber in either 700. Second picture is a loaded round that will chamber in both 700s. They are sticking out of the case gauge the same amount. Specs for the round are LC brass, CCI large rifle primer, 44.0 grains of Varget and Hornady 168 grain Amax.
IMG_20240916_170220873.jpg
IMG_20240916_170158740.jpg
 
Well, a bit of shade-tree mechanics here, but when you have a round like that, pull it out and put a sharpie stripe down the side of the round. I'd say to use "engineer's blue" but I'm an old fart and you never see that stuff nowadays



1726521223054.png


Then, drop it in the gauge so it makes contact, rotate it a bit and pull it out to see where the interference took place.

Could be the shoulder, could be the base.
 
Are you absolutely sure you have your die set properly? Is it definitely set up to 'cam over' when you bottom the press?

The reason I ask is because about 6 months ago, I was resizing some 308 brass and some of it was an absolute nightmare - to the point where I bought a Rockchucker press because I was worried I'd break my Hornady press. The brass had come from an H&K (because their chambers are corrugated like you see on two of those necks) and they were a utter pain in the ass. I really needed my Wheaties that day.

In my situation, I basically resized the brass twice before the brass would plunk in a gauge properly. The second 'take' was primarily to defeat the 'base bulge' they had developed. I'm keeping a close eye on that brass to see if all the work I'd done on the case has reduced the number of times I can reload it.
 
I think most of it has been covered elsewhere but... check your dies for excess lube build up, a good cleaning may help. I was given some dies several years ago that the guy claimed may not work cause he was having issues. I cleaned a ton of gunk out of them and never had an issue.
 
Back
Top Bottom