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Hi all,

I have recently been looking at the Forster Co-Ax press. From the outset, I have to say I have never seen one in the flesh and so have no experience with them, so please forgive me if this seems a silly observation.

Knowing how accurate bench rest shooters and extreme long range shooters want/need their hand loads to be, and knowing how much time and effort some folks put in to seating depth, concentricity etc of their cartridges, I can't help but wonder how well the Forster Co-Ax press performs in these areas.

On watching "you tube" videos of the Forster, it is apparent that there is quite a bit of vertical movement of the die as the ram is lifted, there being a certain amount of "clearance" in the slot for the locking ring. There is also a fair bit of "slack" or lateral movement of the shell holder.

When your seating depth is accurate to .0001", how do you cope with the amount of movement of the die in the press?

Bob - No-one's seating depth is accurate to a thou. - let alone a tenth of a thou. Bullets vary too much for that level of accuracy.

The 'clearance' won't make any difference - the die will always push up to the same place when you bring it down on the bullet.

Incidentally, most benchrest shooters will use a Wilson hand-die for bullet seating but, the Forster Benchrest Seater die and the Forster Co-Ax press will give excellent results.

Don't worry about the 'slack' die fit in the press frame - that's deliberate. The die 'floats' and this gives superior results over most conventional fixed frame / ram / die arrangements. The vertical movement isn't an issue either as the die indexes off the position at which the locking ring contacts the top surface of the slot it is held in. Sized case measurements (case-head to shoulder datum line) are very consistent in those cases sized in a Co-Ax.

The snap-in (and out too of course) die facility is a boon. Changing dies is so effortless and quick, you don't have to batch process say 50 cases for each press operation, but can work things almost as in a turret press.

The one area where the Co-Ax may not give as good results as a top-grade conventional press is neck expansion using a mandrel as an alternative to dragging the case over an expander ball. With conventional size + expand dies, the CO-Ax has a reputation for producing very low neck runouts.

Buy any quality cast-iron press today though and you can expect very good results with good dies and brass.

I did a three-way press test in Target Shooter ezine a year or two back - Co-Ax v RCBS Rockchucker Supreme v the relatively new and very unconventional RCBS Summit.

http://www.targetshooter.co.uk/?p=1750

Hi Guys and many thanks for your helpful info.

I'm currently using an old RCBS cast iron ram press, so it Looks like I might well need to consider the upgrade to the Forster then ;-)

The cast iron RCBS press should be fine for anything you want to reload)(.

I have been using a forster Coax since day one. I use it with all manner of dies, Forster, RCBS, Redding, Lee, it will take the lot.

The mechanical advantage of the thing is phenomenal but the feedback to the operator is still good.