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Ring around seated bullet

If the marks are being made because the seater plug does not match the bullet contour, a cheap way to fix that problem is to apply epoxy to the inside of the seater plug and place a grease bullet inside. Once the epoxy sets, you have a perfectly matched plug for the bullet you use. Or if you run multiple bullets, its best to buy separate plugs.
 
Forster seating dies are meant for older style bullets. Their stuff is high quality...just stuck in the past. You can send your seating stem to them with a couple bullets you want it to seat, and they will lap your seating stem for a fee.

Or you can use valve grinding compound or scope ring lapping paste, a drill and a couple sacrificial bullets and do it yourself. I've had to on all of my forster seating dies. The messed up part is, they know it's an issue but haven't changed a thing.
 
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Maybe someone already mentioned it but the copper jacket on those eldm bullets may be slightly thinner and the seating junction where the seater plug contacts the bullet. The same thing happened when I used the eldx bullets in my 6.5x284. You can either buy a new plug, bed the plug with bedding compound or take a bullet with valve grinding compound and a drill, or use 800 grit wet sand paper to take out any tooling marks.
 
It is nice to have the tools and equipment to modify the seating stems today. Even way back when I started reloading, I would use a drill that you plugged in a wall socket and used a file and stones to get it where it needed to be. It was the only way I could get it done, before the internet was born!
Like I once stated—some of this new tech stuff won't even fit in one ear, much less come out the other ear. Man, am I getting too old to reload???
 
Forster sells a VLD seating stem. Even with the VLD stem I was getting a slight ring on the ELDXs. I then took 600/800/1000 grit wet sandpaper on a drill and lapped the inside of the stem until any noticeable grooves were gone, that helped tremendously. Like I said the jackets of these bullets must be slightly thinner in that location. You may not like the looks of it but until it affects accuracy does it really matter?
 

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