Forster Full-Length Rifle Sizing Dies

Due to being a rifle-writer I feel obligated to try all the reloading dies possible, but after decades of this find more Forster full-length rifle dies showing up on my shelves. Why? Because Forster reloading dies make a very quick and easy job of sizing bottle-necked rifle brass straight, so bullets end up heading into the rifling straight, which results in finer accuracy.

Forster reloading dies are known as “Benchrest,” and if your brass cases are good-quality the Forsters resize brass correctly with less hassle than any other full-length reloading dies I’ve used. While resizing cases straight is possible with just about any brand of full-length resizing die, they often require not only more set-up time but more working of the loading-press handle, plus screwing in-and-out of dies or parts of dies, such as the decapping assembly.

In contrast, Forster Benchrest dies only need to be adjusted in two simple ways. First, like press-mounted dies, they need to be turned in or out slightly for fired brass to be resized correctly for your rifle’s chamber.

Next, they need to be adjusted so the expander ball is the correct height for your press. Unlike standard dies, where the neck-expander ball sits near the base of the case, the expander ball on Forsters is located just underneath the neck portion of the die. As a result the expander enters the resized neck of the brass while most of the case neck is still inside the neck portion of the die, preventing the neck from ending up misaligned with the case body, as it can in conventional dies. Once these easy set-up adjustments are made with Forster Benchrest dies, you can full-length size cases as rapidly as you can work the press handle, and they’ll all come out straight.

I purchased my first set of Forster reloading dies over 20 years ago, for the .308 Winchester. Eileen and I owned (and still own) several very accurate .308s, and I was loading for ‘em a lot, so wanted to spend as little time as possible resizing cases fired in different rifles.

More recently I found myself reloading a lot of 6.5 PRC cases, due to using my custom Sisk 6.5 PRC rifle for most of my big game hunting over the past few years, and test-firing other 6.5 PRC rifles for magazine articles. Luckily, the CEO of Forster, Robert Ruch, recently contacted me and wanted me to try one of their newest Benchrest sizing dies, so I asked for a 6.5 PRC!

Of course it worked very well, partly because my 6.5 PRC brass is Hornady, which is all very uniform. (If you want to read more details on how various rifle reloading dies work, read Chapter 27 in The Big Book of Gun Gack III, “Rifle Die Design.”)

While Forster Benchrest reloading dies cost more than other full-length resizing dies, they save time, both during set-up and sizing. Which leaves more time for shooting! (www.forsterproducts.com)