Hornady seating die w/micro adjust stem VS Forster ultra micrometer seating die

[Kswhitetails]

Who's used both?

Which, and why.

Comparing the two, the Hornady would be cheaper to set up; and I am sorely tempted by the simplicity of the stem as an upgrade to my Hornady seater, but the Forster looks like it's more of a precision piece. Is it worth the extra money for the spring loaded seat?

I've seen two threads where "micro adjust seating stem" are mentioned via search. There are more places I'm sure of it - but I'm running on fumes as it is finishing a project with my son, and this is my escape!

I'm leaning Forster, because the white on black is easier to see, one day this could be an issue - some of you may already know.

If the Hornady allows me to skip the Forster, if it's just as good, etc... That's where I'm leaning. My eyes are good so far.

I am doing one or the other soon. The guy posting this thread can't adjust dies with lock/jam nuts worth much of a dang at all.

Thanks.

I am currently loading on a Dillon 650. Have no complaints. But, it's not right for load development. My experience is that the powder measure is okay, but more suited to volume than precision. So, I am getting a single stage, or a T7 for that. So, the thought is that the 650 will be the size/deprimer station with the case feeder and a uni-decap. Then wet tumble, then store the clean sized brass for future loadings.

The 650 works great to prime cases. The case feeder works well, and 40-100 cases primed is a few minutes of nothing for effort.

I have a BR30 measure coming soon, and will use that in conjunction with a digital scale and trickler to make charges. 0-40 or 40-100 very precise charges this way, followed by the seating step on the single stage with a good micro-seat die seems like the way to go to complete the process.

My dad is on board, and he is procuring the Inline Fabrication quick-change set up for the bench to enable quick swaps of the 650, the single stage, and the bench vise. As well as some other nice Inline goodies. Dan is a great guy, if you don't already know.

I've been watching JRB, and keep thinking to myself that there's got to be a reason he's using that hand primer, but I can't figure out what it is... Priming on the 650 is gravy, and accurate. However, I'll hand it to him, he's got this reloading thing figured out.

[outbreaker]

I use the forester and have replaced all my other dies with it. The only one that I did not was the .300 RUM because I could not find it......so I got an RCBS micrometer.

[grayfox]

This is one piece of the reloading-shooting system..... I have thought about it. But for now, imo there are more fixable things as to accuracy than a micro seater. "Accuracy bang for the buck" sort of thing.

I've got the hornady die set, and the adjuster on top of the seater die is better than rcbs and smoother/easier to tweak... but I don't measure base-ogive (which would eliminate differences due to the tip/meplat of the bullet), I don't weigh and sort my brass, frankly the accuracy killers for me are the "Stonehenger's": 1-inch off shots I pull b/c of something I do or twitch...

my rcbs chargemaster weighs reliably to within 0.1 gr and for most powders that seems accurate enough for my purposes. A 0.1 difference means 6-10 ft/sec diff in MV but that's within any std deviations I've gotten in my loads.
One other thought has occurred to me on this, every time I unscrew the seater (to use the resizer die) and then re-screw the seater I'm changing the seating depth by a thou or 2... so I guess for me I haven't arrived at the point where the micro seater setup seems needed.


Footnote: for my Grrrs my 123sst load "nodes" for the rifles vary between 2405 for the 16" and 2530 for the Howa HB... but at 300 yds that's only about 1 inch delta in impact and all are deer-killing speed/energies, so again, I ask myself if there's accuracy bang-for-buck in it... and haven't quite seen it yet, but that's just my 0.02.

[outbreaker]

I went microseater because it is easier to adjust when I am changing bullet depths searching for node optimization.