Re: Competition Seater Dies
Frankly I'll diverge from the rest of the crew here. I started with strictly Redding competition bullet seater dies but over time ran into an issue with their design when pressing compressed loads. Due to the design, the seater stems are subject to splitting which in turn, galls out an inner portion of the seater sliding sleeve. This was with a 308 Win load, 46.5gr of Varget, and a Lapua 155gr Scenar seated to 2.810" OAL. Quickload shows it at ~108% compressed which is more than within reason from how most folks load compressed charges.
After damaging three 308 Win seaters this way, sending them back to Redding for repair, getting them back and having it happen again (and then buying a new die that then saw the same issue), I began a search for an alternative. After speaking with Redding's tech support line, they readily admitted that the die was not recommended for loading any sort of compressed charge. Even as little as 101% was not recommended.
I finally gave up and tried the Forster micrometer seaters after hearing from a couple of Benchrest shooters that they hold up much better than the Redding. Thousands of rounds later, I would have to concur with the Benchies recommendations.
So, if you don't work up a compressed load, Redding is a very well constructed die and accurate for seating depths. If you do believe you might compress a charge in the future, the Forster is every bit as much of a die, will load very accurately (some say even more refinement as the micrometer allows more definition between .001" tick marks), and seems to be a bit more robust for putting that little extra bit of powder in each case.
My $.02 for what its worth.