357 Sig

[Atreides]

New to the board here, and a relatively new reloader.

I've loaded about 1500 rounds of 45 ACP on my Dillon 650. I am considering branching out. When I first got the press, I told the retailer I would want to load 357 Sig in the near future, because well- it costs more than 45- at least the factory stuff does.

Anyway the guy kind of discouraged me from getting the dies and stuff. He said the case would be quick to stretch out and would need to be trimmed. And for that reason, "people" don't want to reload this round.

So was he right?

I know it's not the most popular load, but I did see one set of specs in the load data section.

[versifier]

Atreides, welcome.
I think what you are running into here is a prevalent attitude that bottleneck pistol cases aren't worth the time and effort to reload them. Carbide dies wouldn't help even if they were available because the cases have to be lubed like rifle cases. This adds two extra steps: lubing and removing lube after sizing. While most will put up with doing that on several hundred rifle cases, strangely enough few are willing to do it for several hundred pistol cases. You do have to pay attention to case length and they do need to be trimmed occasionally, especially if you are running the loads hot, but so do other pistol cases - though many don't bother until they run into functioning problems. Compared to the time it takes to crank out .45ACP rounds with a carbide sizer die, they do take a lot more time. That doesn't stop people who enjoy .30Lugar, .30Mauser, and other similar cases, and it needn't stop you, either. I've always wondered if there were more interest in that kind of case if neck sizing would work and dies for it would be offered, but there may be functioning problems if the case bodies are not sized down. There are a number of members over on Cast Boolits who shoot the oldtimers and might be able to give you more insight into loading the newer ones (I seem to remember reading about new proprietary rounds base on necking down .380ACP cases, but I can't remember any details on them.)