milboltnut
member
- Joined
- Nov 25, 2010
- Messages
- 181
Whats your take on them?
Great company to deal with, great dies to work with!
I have a set of Whidden custom made dies for a 7.7x58 Japanese rifle. They are outstanding people to deal with, great communication, high quality dies. They say it takes about 12-16 weeks once they receive your fired-brass. When I got my 7.7x58 dies about two years ago, it was right around the 16 weeks mark, but they do let you know along the way where things stand with the progress of your dies. I got the custom dies matched to the chamber of my rifle because I wanted to full-body re-size, not just neck-size the brass, but wanted to minimize the amount of overworking of the brass that I will have to do. More importantly, I wanted the completed rounds to fit as close to snugly, without being too tight, as possible. The chambers of the Type 99 Arisaka rifles are loose and I was having problems with the brass not sealing in the chamber enough during firing, and that means that the bullet gets ejected into the rifling before the pressure got high enough to fully burn the powder, and that can cause squibs. Obviously, most people get custom dies to make highly-accurate ammo, and that's good, but my purposes were a little different. I asked them if I was the first one to want to spend the money for custom dies for a World War II military rifle, and they said I was their first customer wanting 7.7x58 Japanese dies, but they have had other people who get their custom dies for military surplus rifles. The sizing dies come with a custom made shoulder bump gauge that you install on a caliper and it lets you precisely set up the sizing die so you can bump the shoulder back as little or as much as you want, e.g. 1-2 thousands of an inch for bolt rifles, or 3-4 for a semi-auto, etc. They have great instructions on how to set up and use their dies.
I'm so happy with this company and their custom dies that at this moment they are working on a set of custom dies for me for a 270 Win rifle.
They have fancy nice lock-rings with a set screw and all that. I am the kind of reloader who thinks a lock ring is supposed to lock the die in place like it is about to be flown to the moon, so I replace the lock rings for my Whidden, Redding, Lyman, and RCBS dies with Dillon lock rings. I would say that the Whidden dies are nicer than my Redding dies, by the way, but the Redding dies work great too, and so do the RCBS dies, etc. I mostly use Dillon dies for pistol and rifle reloading, and they are my favorite, other than the Whidden dies.
That’s not a die issuealways noticed soot around the neck after firing, and was wondering about Whidden eliminating that with tighter tolernaces
Yesthen what is it? Load pressure?
My humble 2 centsthen what is it? Load pressure?
My humble 2 cents
Soot is blow by from neck clearance' no worries as the cartridge seals the chamber or should. My competition rifles will have a soot line that appears as a sine wave except where the lugs are located, my factory cambers are a bit more unless I run a low charge and don't seal.
More experienced re loaders could expand
Nope that's in the reamer.
I don't think its possible, dies are designed to reduce.How does a custom die get an increase in that area?
I don't think its possible, dies are designed to reduce.
Try thicker brass, maybe Laupua
No, that is where fit to the chamber comes in, as in a custom reamer like are used for tight necked chambers where you turn the case necks for a close fit, but that has nothing to do with soot. Quit worrying about soot.in relation to a custom how does it get an increase in that area? If the neck is expanding as the cartridge case is sealing the chamber then that's where a custom die comes into play, correct?