Brad,
Great info, thanks for the help!
Redding told me they fixed the crimp feature last fall. There is some chance if you buy some dies made recently they will crimp.
I had a 2 die set delivered on Friday from Gunstop, I will look at the crimp location on Monday and report back.
I’ll also shoot an Email to Gunstop and see if they can age the dies.
EDIT
The Dies I got in the mail have the crimp feature, and it works great on my brass that is cut to 1.360"
Crimp is Way over done in Image, but I was testing to see you much crimp I could apply.
These Redding dies, and the Forster 300 Blackout dies had no trouble seating this little 110 V-max below the 2.000 mark, normal seating is longer than 2.000
I worked over some LC 5.56 brass with the expander;s in the Redding 300/221 die set.
Use lube inside the case mouth. I did trim one with the Giraud, but it’s hard to hold straight die to the shoulder not being held in the trimmer until the end of the operation.
Necking up then running through another trimmer should work well(right size pilot will make it easy).
I just wanted to bump this with some more info, since there is so much buzz about the 300 blk and not a ton of specific info. You can’t form brass from 221 fireball with a Forster die set. I bought a set the other day with some 221 Fireball brass since it was in stock. It’s a no-go.
Before someone yells “duh!” my theory wasn’t completely off base. Some sets like the Redding die set have multi-step tapered expanders that work for the up-necking. The Forster set has a ball-type expander that isn’t tapered enough for this.
The Forster set seems to be very good quality and I will keep it and just wait for some 300 AAC brass I suppose, unless I get bored and buy a cutoff saw and go to work on some of my 223 Rem brass.
Hope it helps.
Midway is showing that Remington brass will be in stock on July 15th, and Back orders are OK, I would guess that it will sell out quick unless a large amount gets to Midway. I already have my order in. It’s about $25 per 100(plus shipping so order lots of bullets at the same time) and it’s primed, which is cheap for factory Brass.
I’ve loaded ammo on both the Forster Dies, and the Redding dies, they both make good ammo.
Soon 300 Blackout trim dies for the Dillon RT trimmer will be for sale, it one of the quickest ways to convert 5.56 brass to 300 BLK.
Tagging for future ref.
Great thread on a caliber I may be very interested in!
Just an update - I borrowed a Redding size die with the two expanders, and easily formed 100 pieces of 221 Fireball brass to 300 Whisper (AAC) in about 20 minutes. Installed the smaller expander, Quick shot of Hornady one-shot case lube and ran them all through. Then switched out expanders, one more shot of one-shot and had 100 pieces of perfectly-formed brass.
ETA: 1.360" after sizing; within the 1.348" - 1.368" length window. No trimming needed as far as I can tell.