[ejkoechling]

Am finely loading up some 300 savage and everything is going fine till
i get to the FCD by Lee. The cartridge goes all the way in the die and doesn't touch the bullet atall. In fact, the inside of the crimp actually hits the shoulder of the brass. I marked the shoulder with a marker an spun the cartridge and can see wear on the shoulder. I'm using Lee dies with their FCD on a Dillon 550. Is it the wrong FCD? It's marked "LEE 300 SAV-G2" on the bottom of the FCD. It's in a lever action model 99. I'm thinking during the rush back in Jan and Feb Lee may have let this slip through the QC. Any thoughts would be appreciated

 

[AR guy]

I just received my Lee FCD for the 300 win mag and boy that dies sweet. Works great. Sounds like its too big. Mine works great, squeezes it nice and firm.

 

[ejkoechling]

Discovered my problem. I didn't read ALL of the directions. I needed to give it another half turn once I got the die to the shell plate. Everything is working great. Thanks for the response

 

[LDBennett]

ejkoechling:

It is not the Dillion RL550B as I use LEE FCD's on my Dillion all the time.

I suggest you re-read the instructions for set up of the FCD. Is it possible you have it adjusted wrong?

Remember the die has to touch the shell plate on the bottom of the die so the upward push of the ram closes the collet inside the die. As I remember it you put the ram with a cartridge on it all the way up and screw the FCD down until it just touches the shell plate. Then you adjusted the FCD down repeatedly until you get the right amount of crimp after the ram has traveled all the way to the top.

Anything is possible (as to the mis-marking of the FCD) when it comes to LEE. If anyone else made a similar product I would buy theirs instead. The LEE FCD works OK for me but it is not perfect. LEE might have mis-marked yours(???). On one of the early ones I bought (and they might be different today??) LEE chose the same material for the collet and the ring that closes the collet. The result was a galling of the two parts. Any Engineering student knows that when two similar metal are run against each other under a load you get galling. Lee should have hardened one or other of the parts or chosen a different alloy of steel for one or the other to avoid galling. Again this particular FCD suffered a bad choice of materials by LEE which is typical of them in their never ending pursuit of inexpensive tools.

LDBennett

 

[ejkoechling]

LD, thats exactly what I did. Iwas thinking Dillon crimps and didn't finish reading my directions for theLee FDC. DUH. THANKS FOR THE RESPONSE