I'm a fan of the Lee collet neck sizing die, and use/used them for all my bottle neck cartridges. Adjusting them for .0015" neck tension has worked very well, for me.
Two benefits in one; NOT squeezing the neck down ridiculously, which causes your chosen expanding spud/button to also work ridiculously, and allowing just enough latitude in tensioning the neck without needing multiple bushings or spuds. Depending on how finely one wishes to split hairs, how many different brands/lots/vintages of old brass one has, whether one chooses to turn or ream necks, it can eliminate certain other of those activities while allowing some pretty respectable accuracy.
OK, benefit three: eliminates the need to lube, then clean off lube, at least for several cycles through the chamber and dies.
I think every answer, suggestion or observation in this thread boils down to how one achieves taking it easy on the brass and not squeezing the snot out of your bullet.
On customer service, I think I only once ever needed to approach RCBS - for broken decapping pins. I don't remember if they sold them to me or if I paid for them, but I don't remember having any issue. Lyman, and this was many years ago, went to more trouble to get out of helping me than helping me would have been with a very roughly finished 30-06 die. I'd reached a point where I could afford "better" dies than my cheap LEE stuff and bout Lyman. Ended up replacing the Lyman dies with LEE. LEE used to be pretty easy to deal with, but my last few calls met some pretty snotty responses. Charter Arms: on both occasions, a human called me in response to my e-mail query, one of whom was the owner, the other a very polite lady. In both cases they went above and beyond. Ruger,.. pretty good. Not necessarily as "friendly," like Charter Arms, but efficient and fast, with one exception, for which they called me and apologized a year later and asked if they could make it up to me.
And,
@Tomme boy , I have not forgotten the link you posted to LEE support, and will try that the next time.
@Ian , I'll look into the Redding die with two carbide rings.
@L Ross , I worked with ONE customer when I was in industry who made carbide cutting tool "teeth" for machine-tool tooling. He was a bit flaky, so I can't promise t hat this is good information. He gave me the impression that the carbide bits and pieces, though very hard, could be fragile until attahced to whatever they were attached to - something tough, but somewhat resilient. The carbide insert idea is cool. I just wonder if they'd have to build a steel ring round it to make the idea fly. I'd think just a carbide ring would split, without that support. My former gunsmith always insisted on carbide taps, because he could shatter them to get them ouit of the hole if he broke one. I never saw HIM break one, but he did have to remove the tip of one I broke off in a hole once.
