bigfellascott wrote:Interesting G, so do you think they are worth it?
Funny you should ask, BigFella. Been pondering that very thing this morning. Was going to test more ammo in the mates Zasty and my T-bolt but when he came over our first groups had gone completely to poo. I lost all confidence to do any reliable testing and just spent hours wasting good ammo trying to figure out why i couldn't make a decent group with either rifle when they had both grouped well with the same ammo last week!!??!! Screwed my confidence so much i even made a fluff session out of load testing my 223rem. Got some usable results but even though it was a calm day with light breezes, i got better groups in the last session in 17km/h changable winds!!!???!!!
Anyway, that's a different story.
So, are the Waltz dies worth it? Maybe, maybe not, depending on what you want it for.
Improving hunting ammo (hollow points): with really cheap stuff like Fed Champ, that has almost no hollow point, uniforming the length (and flat tip to 0.130ish") and then poking your own standardised hollow point in the end makes a marked difference to the ammo as it does improve consistent bullet diameter and accuracy. BUT. Anything with a substantial hollow point already is not worth trying to press for diameter because all you do is put a huge flat point if you want to change the diameter from 0.221 (not uncommon) to 0.223-0.225. On ammo like this it's hit and miss and i'm getting the impression that the only use for the die here is to uniform the hollow point for terminal performance, as some of these rounds have extremely varied points on them and i wouldn't trust them to open up properly (pin holed quite a number of Win Power Point 40s).
Improving target ammo: i think that's where it comes into its own. Cheaper solid ammo that shoots ok can be made to shoot quite well by pressing the point to the recommended flat. You can then turn it into Hunting ammo by pressing a good reliable hollow point into it. This way you can shoot target practice and hunt with the same round, once you've buggerised around getting all your pressing procedure right.
In short, i'd say for a lot of people it would be too much hassle and out lay (cost me about $160 landed, from memory). For others who enjoy playing around with stuff and finding that cheap ammo they can take from acceptable to reliable it is well worth it. Also for target practice if you go through a crap load of ammo (think i just shot about 200 rounds this morning), it's worth it.
I really want to test more before making a recommendation to anyone but i'm not disappointed that i bought mine. I can turn the Fed Champ Hollow Points into an acceptable round for both my 22s, which is great for practicing off hand and "snap" shooting and it's less than 1/2 the price of Win PP42max (in my Sportco) and almost 1/3 the price of CCI Velocitor (in my Tbolt). So, two more bricks of Fed Champ Hollows and it will have saved me the money it cost.
So, to answer your question, Scott. I dunno yet! LOL!