243 Case length

You should have a way to trim the brass when you process it. I use the Lee lock stud and length cutter with a drill press. There are any number of trimmers out there by RCBS, Lyman, Sinclair, Forester, and others. You should have a set of accurate calipers and know the min/max length for the round being loaded. Each time the brass is fired the length of the neck gets longer. If it gets too long the bullet can get pinched by the brass as it tries to get out of the chamber and raise pressures to dangerous levels. I find that I can reload 2 times before I need to resize with most bottle necked brass. Trimming it all to a standard length will help you with crimping the bullet in if you ever choose to do it.
The brass will actually grow longer when it is resized. You should check it for length after it is resized.

Should have reread the OP. You need to turn in your die some more and bump the neck back some as the poster below stated.

"The RCBS die is set as low as it can go without contacting the shell holder at TDC,.."

Set it for contact if you wish to match the case gage.

"They are my only non-RCBS dies and the only ones that need to contact the case holder to fully do the job."

That's by chance because of the manufactoring tolerances, not brand. A single instance of anything is no sound guide for the anything else. There's as much tolerance difference within die brands as there is between brands.

Just for info, making a reload match a 'drop-in' cartridge gage simply restores it to SAMMI tolerance for factory rounds and that defeats a major reason for handloading. A BIG part of handloading is to make our ammo fit and function its best in our rigs, not to fit in every factory gun ever made for the cartridge. Unless you're making ammo to swap around I suggest you toss that cartridge gage and spend your efforts in sizing your cases to fit YOUR gun, not everyone elses.

This is not for .243 only but be careful using mismatched shellholders and size dies. You can easily move the shoulder back to far and have headspace troubles. The use of a Wilson case length die is good but most don't use them, rather they rely on the size die only which is trouble in the making, Good Luck.

ranger335v said:

"They are my only non-RCBS dies and the only ones that need to contact the case holder to fully do the job."

That's by chance because of the manufactoring tolerances, not brand. A single instance of anything is no sound guide for the anything else. There's as much tolerance difference within die brands as there is between brands.

Just for info, making a reload match a 'drop-in' cartridge gage simply restores it to SAMMI tolerance for factory rounds and that defeats a major reason for handloading. A BIG part of handloading is to make our ammo fit and function its best in our rigs, not to fit in every factory gun ever made for the cartridge. Unless you're making ammo to swap around I suggest you toss that cartridge gage and spend your efforts in sizing your cases to fit YOUR gun, not everyone elses.

Click to expand...

Agreed.

First of all, the shell holder should be bumping the die when the press is fully extended. You should feel the press linkage pop over slightly. That's proper full length resizing guidlines. Now if your wanting to do a partial resize which is simular to necking, you adjust the FL die down just far enought to size the neck and bump the sholder back far enough to allow for normal chambering. Considering you are not contacting the shell holder with the die, you are doing a partial resize and if they chamber OK, your good to go.
And regarding safe, if they chamber without issues and neck tension is good/normal, there is nothing to be concerned about.In fact, accuracy might even be a bit improved with a partial resize set up.

"This is not for .243 only but be careful using mismatched shellholders and size dies."

That's a common misconception. In order to achieve interchangability, all SAAMI makers cut both dies and shell holders to the same sizes AND tolerances, therefore there is no average or consistant difference in what brand either is. Fact is, there is NO specific dimension for anything, it's all a range and anything made within that range is as fully in tolerance as any other so the idea of any one brand being more 'precison made' than others is an advertising farce.

I get amused reading web instructions to "correctly" adjust a sizer to touch the shell holder plus "X" more turns; that demands that each die, shell holder and press be exactly the same and they are not. Our shell holders and dies ARE designed so that having a die touch the shell holder during sizing WILL achive the SAAMI headspace tolerance range but all that does is make the ammo interchangeable with any weapon ever cut in that chamber, just as factory ammo does. One of the major reasons to handload is to make fit our ammo to our own rig and not for every other so SAAMI specs don't matter, at least not to me. I use a "case headspace" gage to adjust MY sizers to make MY cases fit MY rig and that's rarely accomplished by simply touching the shell holder with the die, nor any other "do it this way" by rote method of die adjustment.

For those people who have difficulty adjusting their dies to match their chambers Redding sells an (expensive) set of progressively thicker shell holders that automatically limit how much the user can (over) FL size.

Using the Wilson, I always do, shows where the shoulder is and length. If the case is to long it should show on the case mouth end not the base(primer) end. I guess you figured it out-bump the shoulder.

Also make sure you lube the inside of the mouth or the expander ball may stretch the neck/shoulder on the way out. That causes a hard bolt close. I had that problem till I started to use Wilsons.