Re: best .308 dies?
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Fuzzball</div><div class="ubbcode-body">"if you have the money please do yourself a favor and get a Giraud Trimmer - the best money and time saver you can buy...bar none I promise."
Giraud is good but I think you gonna blanch when you see the prices of a Giraud (or Gracy) case trimmer. I suppose they are worth the cost to some, perhaps those who routinely trim several hundred at a time but few of us do that. The Possum Hollow trimer is a rational way to trim lots of cases in a hurry and the price is MUCH less. And, for case work you will also need a case mouth chamfer/deburr tool as well, any of them will do nicely but most of us prefer the little "rocket ship" shaped types.
Actually, the effect of "precision" case trimming is much less than many seem to think. Cases change length as they are fired so getting them cut to a thousanth gets (literally) blown away, immediately. The case neck walls are usually blown hard against the chamber before the bullet fully exits the case anyway so small variations in length and mouth squareness really have no significance to accuracy. Due to that, many of us find the simple and inexpensive Lee case trimmer tools to be quite satisfactory!
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I don't think anyone is arguing about the value of "precision trimming." It is more of a time saving device. One approach is to measure all of your spent casings and figure out which ones need to be trimmed after each firing. With the Giraud, it takes as much time to trim as to measure, so basically you are removing all of the time associated with trimming. Further, you are adding a chamfer and deburring in the same operation.
Yes, it depends on how one values his time as well as how many rounds you are going through to determine whether a Giraud is worth it. For someone who goes to the range weekly or more, it is probably a pretty good investment. For someone going to the range monthly, it makes less sense. And someone who goes to the range less than monthly is probably a fool to invest in the Giraud.
On the subject of dies, the very best you can get for sizing dies are true custom dies, which include Neil Jones Custom and Warner Tool dies. I think Neil Jones is cheaper, but his design is great. He uses bushings, but the bushings are combination neck and shoulder. With neck only dies plus a body die, you end up with a bulge at the neck-shoulder juncture as a neck die ends up only partially sizing the neck. Of course, it is also fitted to your chamber to create minimal sizing.
The price for this bad boy is $200 + the cost of bushings. You will also need to send him at least 3 thrice fired and neck-only sized cases.
Expensive? Absolutely... but you asked for the best. As mentioned above, Redding is great for both their competition seater and neck sizing / body die combos. Forster also makes a very good seater.
Redding's seater won a very good shoot-out performed by German Salazar here:
Seating Die Shootout
Conspicuously missing from this analysis is the Forster, but present was the Wilson used by most benchrest folks. It is interesting to see the Wilson get beat out... but it was beat out more on concentricity. Benchrest folks might still prefer the Wilson because you use an arbor press to seat with the Wilson, and therefore get a better "feel" for neck tension during the seating process. K&M even makes a gauge for that.
