The Gun Counter

I used my Redding competition dies with my Forster Co-ax a while back to seat bullets in my 6.5x284 virgin brass. worked fine.

Now I am attempting to necksize and reload them. I can't get the neck tension anywhere near what I need to keep the bullets in place. And yes I went and RTFM. It is set up for normal dies where you screw them in and perhaps I am just not grocking it, but... stone cold nothing.

Anyone have experience that can bail me out?

I sent Redding a letter but considering it is Friday evening on Thanksgiving weekend, I don't see an answer before Monday at the earliest. I was hoping to load and shoot some on Sunday.

Check the expander ball in the sizing die, it may be slightly oversize. If it's not really critical, you can chuck it up in a hand drill and use some fine (800 grit or finer) emory cloth to take a couple thousandths off of it, and see if that helps.

First Shirt's suggestion seems reasonable; I've heard that being an issue before (not the same caliber though); I'm pretty sure you can get replacement expanders from Redding (definitely used to be able to) if needed.

Any chance that the brass, virgin or not, is just a bit thin in the neck area?

I really don't think that is the problem. The instructions discuss how to use it on the presses where the bullet moves up into the press and the set up doesn't work for the Forster.

I am going to go out and play with it, but it worked fine when I loaded the virgin brass, but that was just seating. I didn't resize first. It may just require me to fiddle with the height a bit. I did crush one case neck the other day, but at that point I was just getting frustrated and had to put it down.

Might just load up some virgin brass so I can dial in a hunting load tomorrow. Gonna try to spank a deer next weekend with it.

See, this is why I like neck sizers that take inserts.

As long as the die can be adjusted so the shell holder plates meet it at the top of the stroke, your press being a Co-Ax rather than a conventional press is irrelevant. Something else is going on there if you have insufficient neck tension. Since the virgin brass that hasn't been resized doesn't exhibit this issue, then I would tend to suspect something is up with the die, and probably the expander ball as has been suggested.

Netpackrat wrote:As long as the die can be adjusted so the shell holder plates meet it at the top of the stroke, your press being a Co-Ax rather than a conventional press is irrelevant. Something else is going on there if you have insufficient neck tension. Since the virgin brass that hasn't been resized doesn't exhibit this issue, then I would tend to suspect something is up with the die, and probably the expander ball as has been suggested.

I have an email in to redding.
Zero chance of a response before monday. I am likely going to take some time on monday to play with the adjustability and see if it is just user error. If not, I am sure they will get me a new one, fix this one.

I got 9 rounds loaded up so I can shoot 3-6 for determining scope dope, then use one or two for hunting. That 140 gr Berger VLD hunter travelling at about 2850fps (for the load I made), should work quite well on a GA deer in the 100-170# range. Lighter for does, heavier for bucks. We'll see what I see. I will be hunting with some kids and they get first crack as they have never shot a deer before.

One kid will be hunting with me and the other with his mom an experienced deer killer. Dad can't get off from work.