I put it into gear and it dies.

Total at "WHAT" RPM? Do you even know what total timing is yet? And no, it's a serious question, not a smartass one. "RIGHT NOW" you don't even need to worry about total timing. Throw it out the window for the now. Let's concentrate only on initial for now. You need initial on a stock 318 probably around 12 degrees at the most to START and then work on "everything else". If it won't idle in gear with 12 degrees initial (idle) timing, the problem is NOT in the timing. Also, did you ever get the points right? THe points need to be adjusted FIRST....that means BEFORE you adjust timing or you'll never get timing right.
Ok. so yesterday I was only doing timing at idle. it has no vacuum advance hooked up yet at all. I was going to try and get a vacuum line after church today on it and try again. And before I started with the timing light yesterday I rechecked the points and they are still set at .17 and working fine.
also I had the vacuum gauge on it and it was always at around 14-15hg at idle. didn't get higher than that.
Also, at idle if I tried to get the timing down below around 25, or so it would die.