lee's factory crimp die dose just what it states it will crimp the bullet firmly in case just like the factory does .on the 300 blackout it's very easy to colapse the shoulder of case trying to do it with your bullet seating die .the factory crimp die is strong enough that it will form a cannalure in bullets that don't have one .i've found that useing a seperate die made just for crimping usually results in better groups due to equal bullet pull. i now use them on all my bottle neck cartridges
This die holds the bullet from moving forward in the mag on recoil and backward when slammed in the barrel. Much of the accuracy problems with the carbines is bullet oal changes on charging. This die works to stop that. It reduces vertical stringing. I will use one of these on all ammo I have loaded for the AR platform except for the long range match loads.
Unfortunately I started out with a 2 die set for my 300 BLK pistol. While this worked well for "boat tail" style bullets, some of the bullets I reloaded were flat. This caused me to get copper shavings from the initial bullet insertion into the case. Thus I bought a case flaring die. Now the insertion was great, but I now needed to "undo" this case flare with a crimping tool. My bullet seating die supposedly also did crimping, but it was difficult to both set the right bullet depth and set the right crimping position at the same time, This tool allowed to to separate the bullet seating from the crimping and works fine.
The correct position for the crimping die in my set up had the die screwed almost completely down into the reloader top (Dillon XL750 press).
Again, it works great. I now know better than to buy 2 die reloading sets!Read full review
Like in anything we do there are a lot of choices and tools to complete a task. Sometimes it gets confusing and people have different opinions. The Lee Factory Crimp Die is an exception. If you reload and you want to crimp a bullet, THIS is the die to use. I've never heard any arguments to the contrary. The best crimp die on the market bar none. I have one in every caliber.
I like Lee dies! I needed dies for 300 BLK but after reading reviews I decided to go with RCBS AR Dies for sizing and seating. RCBS AR dies seat and crimp at the same time. I dont like that so I dont use the crimp feature on the RCBS.
It is a 2 die set. All of my other dies are Lee so I went with this "Factory" style taper crimp. It does a great job and I highly recommend it!