Lee Dies Ruin my Day

I have an extremely important message for all users of the Internet.

Do not use Lee carbide 9mm dies on a Hornady Lock n Load AP progressive press.

A while back, I loaded up on 9mm semiwadcutter bullets. I wanted them for practice, and they’re also not bad for self-defense. Then I found out I didn’t actually have 9mm dies.

All the dies I had were made by Hornady, and I wondered if I was cheating myself by not trying companies like RCBS, Lyman, Lee, and Redding. I ordered a set of Lee carbide dies.

The carbide was what got me going. If you use carbide dies, you don’t have to use case lube, and presumably, carbide dies will last a long time.

I took these things out of the package a few days ago. The first thing I noticed was that they didn’t have Hornady-style locking rings. They had weird rings with slots cut into them for grip. It took me a minute to realize they were locking rings.

I stuck the dies on my press, and guess what. They didn’t fit. The threaded parts of the dies were maybe 3/8 of an inch too short. When I screwed them into the press deeply enough to make them work, the locking rings, which were on the upper side of the press (where they should be) were barely engaged. Only a thread or two held them on. At least one of the dies seemed to wobble when I pushed on it.

I Googled around and learned that this is a well-known design flaw. It’s amazing that Lee let it happen. There are probably less than 8 prominent companies that make reloading equipment, and they don’t make a huge number of products. Hornady’s press is very popular, Lee knows about it, and they made no effort to make their dies work with it.

I’ll tell you how you solve the problem. You buy new dies. That’s what I did. But you can also move the locking rings from the top of the press to the underside of the die platform. It allows you to screw the dies down where they need to be without sacrificing locking rings.

The problem with this crude solution is that you end up with dies that take a long time to swap. With Hornady dies, you just twist the die and the whole assembly pops out. The locking ring comes with it. With Lee dies, you have to remove the locking ring first, and Lee makes them tight and puts some kind of sticky goop on the threads to make the rings harder to turn. It’s probably great when you use a Lee press and you’re able to put the rings where they should be, but it’s a royal pain if you own the press I have.

I managed to crank out a few rounds, but I ordered Hornady dies anyway.

Figuring out which dies I wanted took hours. It’s not as simple as it sounds. When I bought dies years ago, they all came with roll crimpers. A roll crimp turns the mouth of the casing inward, and if your crimp is too heavy, it makes the metal bulge out slightly below the mouth. Then you get a round that won’t chamber. This is not a great design for most pistols I own.

There are a couple of other options. One, which I’ll get rid quickly by discussing it first, is the Lee Factory Crimp die. I’m not sure I understand this thing completely, but my understanding is that it pushes a sort of sleeve down over the casing and sizes it from the mouth down. This tightens the casing on the round and makes it less likely that the cartridge won’t chamber. It also makes it less likely that the bullet will be pushed deeper into the casing while its being handled and chambered and so on.

Problem: it’s a Lee product, and it has short threads. Forget that.

The other option is a taper crimp. This compresses the mouth of the casing without forming a rolled area or a bulge. I decided I wanted this.

Now I had to decide. Did I want a set with a separate crimping die, or did I want a set with a single die that crimps and also seats the bullet?

It turned out I had no choice. The Hornady set with the dual-function die cannot be had. The apocalypse has dried up the supply. But I learned that this was a good thing, because a separate crimping die produces better results, and it’s easier to adjust two dies than one dual die.

I found what may have been the last Hornady three-die set on earth, and I ordered it. Before you ask, I could not find other brands. That may not be entirely true. Redding may have a set that costs $200. I didn’t bother with products like that. I also ordered a Hornady taper crimp die.

The set comes with a dual-purpose die, but I can fix it so it seats bullets but does not crimp them. It will go size and decap, expand, fill, seat, crimp.

There will be no room for a Powder Cop, but I think they’re stupid for short casings anyway.

I the end, if I manage to sell the Lee dies, I figure I will come out $50 in the hole. That’s life.

I’ve only made 5 charged rounds, and something is going on with the press. When I pull the handle, the press moves until it gets to a certain point, and then it stops. Then if I push it harder, something gives way, and it finishes the cycle. That’s not good. I seem to produce good ammo, but I have to be very careful with every turn of the handle. I think I’ll end up producing a lot of rounds that have to go through twice. I’m going to leave it alone and start over with the new dies.

I’m using Missouri Bullet cast semiwadcutters. The Missouri Bullet company is not brave like other companies. They will not publish load data. This may be why other bullet makers are more successful. Oregon Trails, for example, wrote a whole handbook which you can download for nothing. Missouri Bullet is cowed by lawyers, so you have to find data for similar bullets and do your own work-ups.

I couldn’t find anything that was really good. I admit, I forgot to check the Lyman manual. Accurate publishes load data (brave) which you can download, and I found a recipe that looked okay. It was for an Oregon Trail bullet I had on hand. Problem: that bullet is shorter than the Missouri SWC. That means using the same overall length will push the bullet farther into the casing. This can increase the pressure and cause problems. How big would the problems be? How would I know?

I measured the bullets and found that the Missouri SWC was 0.06″ longer. I decided to increase the OAL by a fraction of that number, and I used a conservative charge. I ended up with bullets that did about 1080 fps, which is fine for 9mm. The casings looked good, so I don’t think I have pressure issues.

These bullets have lube grooves. Lube is wax. Lube grooves are deep, wide slots that go around the bases of bullets, and they are packed with wax. Because of my long AOL, my bullets each had one groove exposed.

I had to read about this. I found out it’s not a big problem. The cartridges will work. Wax can get on things, however, and I don’t like that. I’m thinking I’ll decrease the OAL and see what happens. I read the SAAMI specs, and I will be well within them. That doesn’t mean it will work, but it means I’m not off the reservation.

I would like to get up to maybe 1175 fps. That figure appears in published loads. It would be really nice to go that fast with 9mm.

You’ll never guess which powder I ended up using. Not unless you’re a stalker who actually reads everything I write and remembers it. I found that Accurate No.7 was a top choice. Is there anything that powder can’t do? If you have No.7 and Unique, you can load just about anything. No.7 is extremely versatile, and it’s also flash-suppressed.

So I used No.7. Not.

I have a bunch of BE-86, and I didn’t have a use for it. It’s also flash-suppressed, and it works for this bullet. It’s what I decided to use. I am very happy.

Now my press is set up for 9mm, but I can’t use it. I have to find another firearm job to do while I wait for new dies.

I’m thinking of buying Lehigh Defense bullets for self-defense. I keep reading about them. They look like Phillips screwdrivers, and they’re solid copper. They have provided very destructive results in testing. They also go through barriers like crazy. Ordinary hollow points have problems with things like windshields and drywall, and if they clog with fabric on the way into a perp, they don’t expand. A Lehigh Defense Xtreme Defender will go right through a windshield, even at an angle, and it doesn’t have to expand, so it doesn’t care about clothing. Bonus: they only weigh 65 grains, so the recoil is light, assisting with followup shots.

A guy on Youtube shot right through heavy bulletproof glass with Lehigh bullets.

A lot of people sneer at these bullets. Yeah. I remember sneering at Facebook. Look where it is now. I saw a Youtube expert say he wouldn’t trust them until they had been tested on live animals and so on. So I guess he only buys hollowpoints that were tested on live animals using the scientific method? What brand would that be?

One of the most lethal and experienced police gunfighters wrote about the real-life problems he had in shootouts. His name is Jim Cirillo. He made it clear that failure to penetrate was a huge problem. He shot a man in the skull with a .38, and the bullet slid around his head under the scalp and never entered the cranium. He and a partner shot a man in the face a number of times, and the same thing happened. The man got up and walked to the police car with them. If he had been up against unarmed women, he could still have raped and murdered them.

Cirillo thought developing bullets that actually get inside criminals was extremely important, and he dedicated years to trying to develop something that worked. He came up with something similar to the Xtreme Defender, but he never perfected it. He wanted something that penetrated auto glass and sheet metal. It looks like Lehigh and some other companies are following his lead.

Lehigh says its bullets are extremely destructive inside a body. This may or may not be true in practice. Maybe they’re no better than hollowpoints. But they have the advantage of piercing things like leather and heavy fabric much better, and right or wrong, testing suggests they will do more damage than hollowpoints. They may be a smart bet.

I’ve seen Paul Harrell, the Youtube guru, test these things. He shot what looked like a 2″ group at 10 yards. This is not great by his standards, and he said as much, but on the other hand, how much will 1″ groups help you when punks attack you in a parking lot? You, the punks, and the coroner will never see the difference between 1″ rounds and 2″ rounds.

Harrell uses a hilarious meat target to evaluate rounds. Xtreme Defenders tore it up like nothing else. He uses watermelons to simulate lungs, and the bullets destroyed them. The issue here is that watermelons aren’t stretchy. Does that mean Xtreme Defenders won’t do all that much damage to lungs, which can stretch and recover? Well, he had pork on both sides of the watermelon, and the pork was ripped up pretty badly. Pork is like human flesh. It suggests, but doesn’t prove, the bullets will work.

Job 1 is to be able to hit important body parts by shooting well. Job 2 is to get the bullets inside the criminal so they can do their work. Everything else takes a backseat.

I’m thinking it over.

As I’ve often said, I have zero interest in shooting anyone, and I have doubts about my willingness to send unsaved people to hell in order to survive on this miserable earth, but when you own equipment designed for a certain purpose, the natural thing is to try to make it work well.

I received a new bolt shroud for my Ruger Precision Rifle. This is a part that attaches to the bolt, obviously. The stock part lets the bolt rattle around a lot. This is annoying, because when you pull the bolt back and then try to move it forward to chamber a round, it may actually bind and get stuck. I don’t mean it gets stuck to where you need a hammer, but you may have to wobble the bolt and push a second time. It’s amazing that Ruger let this happen.

Should I care about a sticky bolt? Yes. I don’t like moving around between shots. You want things to be consistent. If you take your face off your buttstock (that sounds bad) between rounds, you upset everything. I want “BOOM-click-click-BOOM,” not “BOOM-click-rattle-rattle-curse-shove-BOOM.” I don’t actually curse, but the temptation is there.

Today I’ll install the bolt shroud. That should take almost two minutes.

I look forward to trying it. I also got a larger rear bag, and I’m hoping the improved bolt and less-fiddly bag will close up my groups.

I’m also going to see if I can set my Savage 93R in .17 HMR up with a new Athlon scope. I did all the math for the scope, base, and rings, but when I tried putting them together on my AR-15 for laughs, I found out there was an additional factor. Even if your rings and rifle work with your tube and bell, things can bump into the eyepiece, which has a larger diameter than the tube. I couldn’t check the scope on the Savage because I was waiting for a suitable base to attach.

I made an error when I ordered the base. Reflexively, I ordered a 20-MOA base. This is a base with a 20-MOA downward slope toward the front. When you shoot long distances, you may have to drop your barrel over 40 MOA, and you can run out of clicks. An angled base will help. Sadly, I forgot that no one shoots .17 HMR at really long distances. For prey, you can do 300 yards at best. You can shoot longer distances if you’re just happy to hit anything. So I have a 20-MOA base I don’t need. When I set up at 100 yards, I’ll be starting out 20 MOA in the hole.

I don’t know if it will matter. I think I’m going to attach it and use it. If it turns out to be wrong, I can change it later.

If the rings I bought work with the Savage, I’ll be able to set it up today, and I might even be able to zero it.

I already entered the Savage and my Thompson Center .204 in my Kestrel calculator. You have to name your guns. I chose Betty and Veronica. When it comes to the Ruger, I’m torn between Naomi and Tyra.

The weather people are making horrible predictions. I choose not to believe them. It will NOT rain heavily for 10 consecutive days. I’m not having it. I’m going to get the Ruger zeroed, I may get somewhere with the Savage, and there is hope that I will even make it to a gun range.

To sum up:

1. Do not ever buy Lee dies for any reason.

2. Taper crimping is what you want.

3. Lehigh Xtreme Defender bullets seem pretty good.

4. Rings that fit your tube may bump into other things, so don’t throw out the packaging your rings come in.

5. Do not buy a 20-MOA base for a rifle that can’t shoot longer than 400 yards. I think.

6. Accurate No.7 is the flubber of powder. It does just about everything.

MORE

It’s like something is trying to prevent me from shooting.

I installed the new Anarchy Outdoors titanium bolt shroud on the Ruger Precision Rifle, and it’s wonderful. Installation literally takes 10 seconds once you have the bolt out. Now the bolt slides in and out like greased glass. But when I tried to put the new scope base on the Savage 93R, it turned out Amazon had let me down. I needed a base with a 1-5/8″ ejection recess, as described in the ad, and they sent me one with a 1-3/8″ recess. In case you have a Savage 93R with a 1-5/8″ port, you need the EGW base, model 41602. That’s assuming you want 20 MOA.

I have a Smaug-like mass of .17 HMR, and I can’t shoot it because of scope problems. I could just slap the old Burris back on the rifle, but I really want to use an MRAD scope.

On the up side, the low Seekins rings I bought for the Athlon scope are the perfect height, so I don’t have to go through with an Amazon return. I ordered two sets of higher rings. I’ll send one set back and keep one for the T/C Venture. I was concerned Amazon would give me problems because I had already messed up the packaging on the low rings.

I can’t reload 9mm. I can’t shoot the Savage. I can’t shoot the Venture.

I have a jug of Vihtavuori powder for .45 ACP. I have enough bullets to crank out about 300 rounds of JHP. I guess I could do that. I can still shoot the AR-15 and the RPR, and of course, there are always .22’s. Life could be worse.