cartridge would make a good candidate to try out the X-Dies on. Immediately upon arrival I opened the box and began a cursory exam of the dies, attempting to come to grips on how they worked. On the surface there didn't seem to be any major distinction between the two styles of dies, but when I disassembled the X-Die resizer I found a couple of slight, but very important, dimensional differences in the mandrels. If you look closely at the photo (page 111) showing the disassembled die you will notice that the mandrel, or expander shaft, of the X-Die resizer was redesigned in a kind of stair-step manner. I believe this is a major key in how these particular dies are able to slow down the progress of case length growth. A PERSONAL CONFESSION
I would be the fi rst to admit that I
might have a few personal fl aws within my makeup. It is unlikely that anyone would question that statement, but if they did, I’m quite sure that my wife would be more than willing to set the record straight for them. I suppose one of the worst of these is the fact that I am basically a very impatient person and with that comes a desire to jump right into a project without reading or follow- ing any type of instructions. Avoiding what I often see as the trivialities of di- rections usually allows me to get a jump on the endeavor at hand. While doing so I might have to take a couple of stabs at it before I get everything just right, but to me that is considerably better than trying to decipher instructions over the telephone. I just can't seem to take notes rapidly enough and still decipher them later. There have been a couple of occa- sions, however, that avoiding reading the instructions that came with a par- ticular product has resulted in causing me problems and, yep, you guessed it – this was one of those times. Being eager to see how the X-Dies worked, I cavalierly shoved aside the directions that came in the box and immediately placed the resizer in my press and ad- justed it as I normally do. After resizing the cases, as usual I trimmed each to 0.010" under the recommended maxi- mum length. But as I would eventually fi nd out, that put me on a path that I would eventually regret. Even though I did see some marginal degree of reduc- tion in the length growth, it did not live up to my expectations, or those claims
by the company. After only fi ve fi rings the cases loaded using the X-Dies were already beginning to exceed the specs. Even though that was considerably bet- ter than the results I was achieving from the standard set of RCBS dies, it still was a bit disappointing. Following that sorry beginning
I decided to fall back and start over fresh. After carefully reading through the directions, a fresh set of cases was picked out and trimmed to specifi ca- tions that the directions called for: 0.020" under maximum. After that I carefully adjusted the dies as per the company’s recommendations and from that point forward I experienced considerably better results. So, please, if you do decide to give the X-Dies a try, “Do as I say – not how I originally did.” Read and follow the instructions beforehand. I was quite happy to fi nd that unlike many of the instructions encountered today, these were written in a precise manner that were clear to understand and lacked that typical second language fl are about them. Undoubtedly, quali- fi ed and knowledgeable folks with an understanding of handloading wrote these right here in the great U.S.A. THE TESTING
In order to evaluate the perfor-
mance of the X-Dies I fi gured it would be appropriate to draw a direct compari- son between the performance of those
dies with that of a set of the traditionally styled RCBS dies. Fortunately, I already had a set of older RCBS full-length dies that I’d been using for years. I began the process by selecting four once-fi red cases from a box of Federal factory- loaded ammunition. My intent was to load two cases with each set of dies, fi re those, then repeat that process until the cases had either reached the maximum recommended length, or they had exceeded what I believed was the life expectancy of the cases. After each fi r- ing the case length was measured before and after resizing, and those values were recorded in order to precisely monitor the rate of growth. Both my Hornady and Nosler reloading manuals listed the maximum length of a .22-250 case
The cartridge cases were measured after each fi ring and after each resizing in order to provide a thorough record of the changes that occurred to the length of the cases and to ensure that none exceeded the maximum recommended length.
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