RCBS "X" dies...

[Ruger Packer]

Anyone here had any experience with these dies? Do the claims made measure up or is it just gimmicky?? :?

 

[WYO1]

Kind of a band-aid. I bought one for 22/250. You have to trim your brass to the same length, and there is a stop shoulder on the neck expander button shaft that is supposed to [when adjusted properly] bump the end of the case to keep it from getting longer. Problem is, when the neck expander button is pulled from the case is when most of the case lengthening takes place. I did notice that the neck resizing area of the die does not reduce the neck as much as a standard die. Kinda like if they used the same dimensions on a standard die, one might not have as much problem with case lengthening. IMHO that most bottleneck dies reduce the neck area much more than is neccesary, working and stretching the brass un-neededly. There's a long winded answer to "gimmickey".

 

[edfardos]

If somebody figures it out, please post here. I have xdies for 30'06 and haven't used the "xdie" portion of the die yet (I keep the mandrel backed out so it doesn't contact the brass mouth) so I just use them like regular dies. I think the key is to trim the bras .020" shorter than spec, then supposedly it works. The extra .020" probably makes up for the stretching the expander ball does. If you have a Lee trimmer, you can't trim brass any shorter than spec, so it's not exactly possible unless you grind off the guide-pin on the lee trimmer, i bought an extra trimmer, pin so maybe i'll do just that and give it a try.

Measuring every single piece of brass seriously sux. If the xdie prevents this, I could probably go full-progressive with rifle brass (using rcbs pro 2000 press).

--edfardos