Quality of Forster Dies

[hammie]

@HiBC: Thanks for the reminder. You do need to keep the expander button low on the shorter 6.5 grendel case. In this situation, though, I swapped out the forster expander rod with another rod which has a tungsten carbide expander button. The carbide button is sitting at the bottom of the rod, next to the knurled de-capping pin holder. With the tungsten carbide, I usually don't have to lube and clean the necks, no squawking noises, and an easier upstroke effort on the press arm.

@Shadow 9mm: I think you're correct. The grendel is just an improved 7.62x39mm, necked down to 6.5 mm. Because of the less taper, I think it would have to be fireformed first. About 20 years ago, I fireformed a bunch of 30-40 krag to .303 british with unique, cream of wheat, and a drop of elmer's glue at the top to hold it all in. It got pretty messy, pretty quickly. I will keep your suggestion in mind, though. Maybe the component situation will start easing up.

 

[HiBC]

Do you think running 7.62 x39 brass through the 6.5 Grendel sizing die might put the shoulder in the right place to headspace on?

IMO,as long as you have a headspace feature in the right place, forget the Cream of Wheat mess.
Load them,moderately, with a bullet and shoot them. They will fireform fine.

The extra case taper of the pre-fireformed rounds might compromise magazine feeding. You might need to load one or a few in the mag at a time.

If its a controlled round feed gun,do feed the rounds up from a mag. Forcing extractor snapover is not a good plan.

Good luck!

 

[Nathan]

With honed die, one may not even need expander, if the brass neck is turned to correct thickness. That probably will give rise the best concentricity.

I use the expander. If not, some necks will curl inwards.

 

[Unclenick]

You can position the expander where you can run the case mouths over it and withdraw the case without resizing anything else. That will clear the curl before you remove it to do the resizing. You can also resize first, then expand with a Lyman M-die just to open the lip of the case mouth. That has the advantage of letting you set the bullets straight up for seating, which tends to improve concentricity.