Hornady dies with Forster Co-Ax
Posted: Wed Jul 03, 2019 6:34 am
Thought I would post this here since I know there are other members with Co-Ax presses; and I have always recommended Hornady dies since the lock rings are compatible, and they are usually nice in general. I have done a little reloading lately and had trouble with the Hornady seating dies for both calibers. First was 300 blackout; the seating die couldn't be adjusted high enough before running out of threads. I had a second set of RCBS dies which I bought from a friend who was getting out of 300blk, along with all of his ammo and a sweet Noveske 8" barrel. I put a Hornady lock ring on the RCBS seater and it worked fine in the Forster press.
Next up was .45 Colt. I normally reload this caliber on my Dillon SDB, but I had bought a set of regular dies (Hornady again) for loading single stage for load development (working on a load that will stay subsonic out of my 12" SBR). The Hornady Titanium Nitride size die is sweet, same benefits (no lube needed) as a carbide die. Had the same problem as before not only with the seating die, but also the expander die. I have a Lee universal expander so that was easily solved, but the only alternate seater I could find was out of AlaskaTRX's .500 Smith RCBS set. That's not really ideal but since I was loading flat nose bullets for a non precision application, it worked out OK. Using a Lee Factory Crimp die with both calibers, so no issues there other than to note that I wouldn't have been able to crimp with the Hornady seaters had I wanted to, either.
I will probably not be buying any more Hornady die sets even though in general I still like most of their stuff.
Finally, another thing that came up in a search as I was researching to see if others had this problem... Some dude on another forum was claiming that the actual Forster lock rings are a better choice than the Hornadys, because the latter are steel. The Forsters are aluminum, and the claim was that over time they could wear out the slot for the lock ring in the press body. I am not sure how much of a problem using the steel Hornady rings really is, but it's another aspect I hadn't really considered.
Next up was .45 Colt. I normally reload this caliber on my Dillon SDB, but I had bought a set of regular dies (Hornady again) for loading single stage for load development (working on a load that will stay subsonic out of my 12" SBR). The Hornady Titanium Nitride size die is sweet, same benefits (no lube needed) as a carbide die. Had the same problem as before not only with the seating die, but also the expander die. I have a Lee universal expander so that was easily solved, but the only alternate seater I could find was out of AlaskaTRX's .500 Smith RCBS set. That's not really ideal but since I was loading flat nose bullets for a non precision application, it worked out OK. Using a Lee Factory Crimp die with both calibers, so no issues there other than to note that I wouldn't have been able to crimp with the Hornady seaters had I wanted to, either.
I will probably not be buying any more Hornady die sets even though in general I still like most of their stuff.
Finally, another thing that came up in a search as I was researching to see if others had this problem... Some dude on another forum was claiming that the actual Forster lock rings are a better choice than the Hornadys, because the latter are steel. The Forsters are aluminum, and the claim was that over time they could wear out the slot for the lock ring in the press body. I am not sure how much of a problem using the steel Hornady rings really is, but it's another aspect I hadn't really considered.