Hornady or Forster dies for ABLR

[TNhuntsman]

I'm starting to get set up to do some reloading, going to start with the 129 ABLR for my ARs and RAP and am trying to decide on a set of dies for it.
The Hornady and Forster are what I have boiled it down to, which one would be preferred for loading the long nose thin jacket of the ABLR?

Hornady with VLD seater stem
Forster Ultra Micrometer

[Popeye212]

I am going forster I have the hornady doesn't have the alignment the forster does. If i can I will post a pic
Hornady Custom Competition with Micro Seater on the left .223 Rem
Forster Micrometer Seater on the right 6.5 Grendel
Dirty thumbnail in the middle...Sorry about that, impromptu photo op no time to prep.
hornforstdie2.jpg

[Mad Charlie]

Forster. I did lap my seating stem though, cost a bullet. The last Hornady die I had, the slider was a lot looser than the Forster and not spring loaded.

[dpete]

Charlie how did you go about lapping the die with a bullet?

[Mad Charlie]

I made a little fixture to hold the seating stem in my lathe, so I could spin it without damaging it.
I mounted a bullet in a small Jacobs chuck in my tail stock. Then I just smeared some 220 clover lapping compound on the bullet ogive and applied light pressure to the seater using the hand wheel of the tail stock, just bumping and releasing pressure until I decided it was enough, then cleaned everything up and used 600 grit with the machine reversed, shined it up nicely. Those grit numbers were what I had on hand.

You don't want to spin it too fast, and you want to leave a tiny bit of the original edge, no knife edge.
It worked out pretty good. I thought about just using a VLD type case chamfer tool instead of lapping, but those cut really fast and you don't need to move much metal and lapping is much smoother.

Basically, I just broke the sharp edge of the seater with the profile of the bullet ogive, with as wide of a seating surface as I could get without leaving a knife edge. It also has been working well with all of the other bullets that I use.

Another note: Because the lapping bullet does wear, the lapped profile doesn't exactly match an untouched bullet, but it still pretty much eliminated "seater artifacts". The ABLR is a soft bullet, so a very compressed load or high neck tension may still leave artifacts.

I could make a seater stem from scratch and a form tool and lap to match only the ABLR ogive, but that is an awful lot of work to get it right.

I have also thought about using my same setup and epoxy to make a custom seater, but first I need to get another seat stem. Cheaper to buy than make, in time anyway.

[Popeye212]

Forster will hone the stem. I talked to them about that a while back. $7.00 to hone the stem $6.00 for shipping. I don't have the facilities to properly hone one.

[centerfire]

I don't own Hornady dies but the sets I looked at were a good value. I went with Forster because I like their micrometer design and their honed sizing dies. Forster is often the high quality benchmark other brands are compared against. If they fit your budget, Forster dies are excellent.

[TNhuntsman]

Thanks for all the input, Forster seems to be what I need, I will get the Forster full length sizing die and the ultra micrometer seating die. If I have any issues with bullet deformation I will just send it off to be honed, this would be the easiest route.
Now the search for a good deal, opticsplanet has them for $122 shipped but they frustrate me sometimes so I gonna look around a bit more.