Favorite dies for the Arisaka ...

[BrocLuno]

7.7x58 and 6.5x50.

Am setting up a press, so no more Lee Basic Loader stuff. Now I need to decide on dies

 

[FROGO207]

There will be many that will tell you that their particular dies are the best. They all seem to be good these days. The Lee brand is the least expensive, and works well for me. The RCBS have the best guarantee out there but one might argue you are buying the spare parts that they give you up front. I own Lee, RCBS, Pacific, Hornaday, Lyman, Bair, Herters, and a bunch of other brands of dies and they ALL produce accurate ammo with no major problems. These days price and then features are what I pay attention to most. For handgun and straight walled brass it is worth the money to buy carbide or equivalent sizing dies to save having to lube the cases when resizing.

 

[mgmorden]

I'd agree with Frog. Typically these days I USUALLY buy Hornady dies but most of my preference there is over trivial stuff. Every brand currently sold will load good ammo.

 

[slowr1der]

I agree with the others. Really any of the main brands are good. I personally prefer Lee. I've never had an issue with one and they are usually priced very reasonably and I love their FCD. I do generally change the lock rings out to Hornady lock rings. Hornady, RCBS, and Redding are also all good choices. I will say that I've had more than one set of RCBS dies that had issues. RCBS took care of it for me each time, but I still expect more from them since they generally cost more than the others.

 

[LoonWulf]

I like the lee dies, and I hey are what i have for my 7.7. i own lee, rcbs, and hornady, and sizers are pretty much the same, but i like hornadys seater dies better. Im probably gonna order a 7mm and 30 cal seater since they arent cartridge specific, i already have a 6mm qnd 6.5mm

 

[BrocLuno]

Cool, that gives me more options. I was worrying about decapping/expander rods breaking or not pulling out well. But, seems all these work well enough for you'all. That makes my life easier

The press is an old Hollywood Universal three station circa 1938. Massive strong old beast. But it does not have a seat for modern shell holders. Then I found the adapter online to mount modern shell holders in the ram and we are now good. I don't need to use the priming rod as I'll hand prime with a Lee.

Since these are mostly old military cartridges I'll be loading, I will be crimping the bullets in, so the three station is really nice.

For all the bolt actions, I can neck size for the most part. For the M1 I think it'll be full length resizing for sure. But that takes experimentation to get the best tune for each. Have never played with collet dies, but am looking forward to trying some

 

[fguffey]

Now I need to decide of dies

I started with Herter dies. I added a 308 W forming die from RCBS. A few years ago a reloader, collector, shooter purchased a 7.7 Japanese rifle and wanted to start loading. It would seem easy enough but there were options and no one could agree so I contacted the reloader through email and made him an offer. I formed 80+/- a few cases and sent them to him with an explanation: 20 cases were formed to minimum length, 20 cases were formed to go-gage length from the shoulder to the case head, 20 cases were formed to no go-gage length from the shoulder to the case head and 20 were formed to field reject length from the shoulder to the case to the case head.

His bolt would not close on the no go-gage length cases and the bolt would not close on the field reject length cases. I never saw his rifle, he did not send me cases. After firing all of the cases he came to the Market Hall Gun show with a few more questions and his Japanese rifle. All a die, press and shell holder can do is size a case. I have other Japanese sizing dies that have the ability to size cases to fit a chamber; regardless of the cost there is no die that can size a case better than the Herter.

F. Guffey

 

[GaryL]

The Lee sizer has a little hole in the shoulder area that causes a little button of brass when reforming 30-06 to 7.7 that needs to be scraped off. I don't know if that's the norm, but it's not a problem - just something to be aware of.

 

[BrocLuno]

Yeah, it seems many of the die makers have lube/air escape holes in their dies. You'd think that folks forming brass would go slow enough so as to not trap air... But apparently they do and then the cases are malformed ...

fguffy I'm sending a PM

 

[mstreddy]

I have the Lee die sets for both 7.7 and 6.5. They are the Full Length sizing 2 die sets.
I actually have a second set of Lee dies for the 6.5, PM me if you're interested.