"Lee Precision, Inc. states that Speer Bullets says that some of their bullets do not well in Lee Dies, but does not say which calibers."
It brings back a chuckle. To answer, read all of this, it does tie together eventually.
At one time Blount, Inc. was owner of both RCBS and Speer, back in the late 70s - 80s if I remember correctly. RCBS gave favorable magazine writers a lot of "support", aka freebies or huge discounts for "used" tools. The writers then wrote glowing words for all things green, lots of young guys bought stuff on their reading so it worked well.
Under Blount, big green got quite proud of themselves. They started some significant price creep, topping out as the most expensive loading tools available at the time. Blount liked that and the "you get what you pay for crowd" could feed their egos if not the quality of their ammo. Then competition kicked in, as it always does in a real free market economy.
Lee. Dick Lee started in the 60s with simple hand die kits that neck sized and reloaded cases with a mallet. The little kits actually made some quality ammo so Lee began to grow in sales. Eventually, Dick Lee determined he could engineer and manufactor some inexpensive but excellant loading tools and dies that would equal most of the qualities of others while using modern methods. He did, it worked, and Lee almost overnight cut a wide path through the reloading community. When Lee produced his collet type "Factory Crimp Die" (an excellant tool when used correctly) he grabbed masses of sales for the crimper. RCBS turned greener with envy and resentment for the up-start "cheep" competition.
The only way Blount could see to blunt Lee's competion was to lie about the FCD. They ran a long, expensive add campaige in most gun magazines with photos showing how "Lee dies" massively damaged Speer bullets and recommended the use of RCBS instead. I'm sure it worked on a few people but most of us looked at photos of a pinch-waisted bullet supposedly crimped in a FCD and said, "No way that can be true." I soon bought my first FCD to see if they were lying and, yep, they were. The only way anyone could have crimped any bullet the way the photo showed would have been to hack saw the normal crimping collet slits wider to allow the fingers to go far passed normal. I liked my new FCD die so well I soon had one for each of my rifle cartridges and still have them.
Lee's response to the adds was simply to accept them and ran adds saying not to use Speer bullets in their dies and also put the same precautions in their "instructions". But they tactfully never mentioned that the photos had shown bullets damaged by multilated FCDs, just left that up to their customers to understand and avoided any lawsuits. RCBS and Speer sales slumped so badly for a long time that Blount finally sold them off. I haven't bought a Speer bullet since. RCBS' prices soon fell back in line with most others. I don't think either company has yet fully recovered to what they would have been if not for the deceptive adds but, bottom line, forget it. Use any bullets you wish with Lee's tools.
To be fair, no matter which side of the fracus anyone was, ALL the management of all three companies are long gone. Holding grudges against the present operators would be as immature as some folks determined jihad over things that occured hundreds of years ago in the mid-East. Guess I should buy something from Speer again, if just for fairness? (I have bought some GREEN stuff, for features, not the hype that goes with it.)
Lee's rifle FCDs have a moving part that has a learning curve which some users can't seem to get over. It still takes determination to seriously damage bullets with them tho.
