RCBS .38 dies

[taylor]

I bought an older but knew set of dies at Olies and discovered they're a little different;
The first die ONLY sizes the case. The second die de-caps and flares the case. The third die seats and crimps.
I've never seen dies that work in this order, is there any advantage?

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[Throckmorton]

It's just RCBS's way of doing things as near as I can tell.Some of their sets are ot that way,it's caliber-related as I recall,but they've never explained why in their instructions.

 

[Rammit]

strange i have a set i bought used and they are size/deprime, expand and seat/crimp

 

[AMProducts]

These are old style dies, no real reason why they did things that way at one time, I imagine maybe it made manufacture simpler... All of RCBS' new die sets are in the standard size/decap, bell, seat/crimp order so they work better on progressive presses. If you look at your dies, you will usually see a two digit number following the type of die, this tells you what year it was made. I would bet your set was sometime in the 1980's.

 

[taylor]

They were made in '78. They're really beautiful steel dies, real quality made.
Its funny I actually bought the set to get the Flaring die, because the Lee set I bought is really just a 357 specific set and won't flare a .38 . So I bought this set cause it was cheaper than buying one die, now if I want to use just the RCBS flaring die, the case will go through 2 de capping dies in a row.First the Lee Carbide Sixer/decapper then the RCBS de capper/expander die.