To neck size or FL resizing

[Tomas204]

Ok I do this for my big rifle .270 Winchester MOD 70, but now I have some smalller calibers, which I reload, mainley my .223 Mossberg MVP bolt action, I want the best out of my brass and shooting best groups .


I also have a .204 should I go this way too ????

[Unclenick]

The less you stretch brass, the longer it lasts. Board member Hummer90 has gotten upwards of 200 loads from some cases, but had special chamber reamers made so they come out of the chamber very close to the size they will be resized to later, including special narrow chamber necks so the neck expands only a half thousandth to a thousandth.

Best accuracy often involves at least slight resizing of the sides of the case. This is because uneven wall thickness tends to put a case head and neck slightly off center. Slight resizing of the sides and pushing the shoulder back 0.001" will let the case self-center the neck and bullet at firing. However, if you are careful to orient the case headstamp the same way each time, then you're tending to reposition better as-fired.

For neck sizing, the least expensive tool turns out to be one of the best.

[eldermike]

For my 2 cents.

If your bolt face is out of square to chamber, your chamber is not round and your bore is not inline with the chamber, then full length resize.

If all these factors are perfect or close to it, neck size only.

If you are somewhere in between (which describes an off the shelf rifle) then partial full length resize to suit the actual conditions of your rifle.

[Unclenick]

Keeping the headstamp always oriented the same way addresses that, but it's a nuisance.

[eldermike]

I did index all of my target rounds even though the guns were very close to perfect the brass is not.

[Crusty Deary Ol'Coot]

Baring having done as UncleNick is speaking of, always and forever size bottle neck the minimum amount that will allow brass fired in YOUR chamber to again chamber in YOUR chamber after sizing.

Some of the companies directions are waaaaay off the mark if you want reasonable or good grass life.

The is no need to buy "neck sizing dies" in most cases if you just set up your full length dies to the needs of YOUR chamber.

If your doing as some instructions say, turning the sizing die to touch the shell holder at the top of the ram stroke and in some cases a 1/4 turn more so the ram "pops" over center at the top of the stroke, you are in almost all cases, OVER SIZING YOUR BRASS!

Crusty Deary Ol'Coot

[reynolds357]

For the most part, I neck size. Have to full length size when the brass gets sticky.

[Unclenick]

Note that with standard sizing dies size the outside of the neck enough so the thinnest spec brass will still be squeezed down enough. If your brass is not dead minimum thickness, it is over-resized in the standard die and the expander then resizes it back out again. That has the double drawback of working the brass more than necessary and the expander tending to pull the neck off-axis as the video showed. If you want to maximize case life you want to avoid the over-resizing and expanding. The two ways around that are the Lee Collet Die in the video, and the various bushing type dies, which allow you to pick a neck bushing that's the right size for your neck thickness so no expander is needed.

I have recently been sizing critical rounds in two steps. One step is the Lee Collet Die for the neck. The second is a Redding body die for narrowing and slight shoulder setback as needed.

Advantages the Lee die design has are: Because its mandrel sizes the inside of the neck it doesn't matter what the neck wall thickness is so there's no bushing to buy and select for the brass lot. Having no expander means you don't need to remove the decapper or put on an undersize expander to avoid pulling necks off axis when you use it. The mandrel prevents formation of an internal donut at the junction of the neck and shoulder. It costs a lot less.

The drawbacks to the Lee design are that there's a small learning curve in using it and getting the feel of it. Lee is not big on fine finish, so I usually end up taking the time to lap my collet dies for smoother operation and better feel.

The bushing die advantage is you can get a bushing type full-length sizing die so you can correctly size the neck and set the shoulder back in one step. If you also want to decap at the same time, though, you do need an undersized expander nut for the decapping pin chuck. You can lap down the one that comes with it by a thousandth by spinning it in a drill with some 600 grit wet/dry looped over it. That way it doesn't drag on the neck when the bushing is correctly sized and you still have something to take dents out of necks.

[reynolds357]

I prefer using bushing dies with no expander.