Neck turning

titch--

titch--

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I just got into doing some outside neck turning and I have a lil frustrating question for the guys in the know.

From what Ive read you want to trim about 75% of the neck. Some said even up to 80-90, but nothing past that because you dont want to take too much off.

Anyways I keep it around the 75% mark. Well sometimes Ill have a one or two brass out of tenish that won't trim 50% and then sometimes Ill have one that will trim 100% of the neck. I just want to know what you guys do for this? Do you want to keep the same setting of trimming throughout all of them or is it more important to have them all trimmed to that 75% ish mark? To me the 75% makes the most sense because its all about the neck tension being consistent, no?

What I did with my 223 cases is I set aside all the ones that were not trimmed to that 75% mark until I was done going through them all and came back and trimmed them again until they were. So now Im doing some 243 cases and dont know if thats the right way of doing it or not... :confused:

thx
 
Invest in a neck thickness gauge. Percentages is not something you should be measuring in a case.
And use the same setting for all your brass. Neck thickness varies, even in brass from the same lot.
 
First I would buy a simple and "cheaper" thickness gauge like I have below to see if the case necks are worth turning. The approximate thickness of the average .223/5.56 cases is .012 and good quality brass doesn't vary in thickness as the case below does. There is .004 variance on the case neck below and and if your are aiming at a .012 neck thickness you would take .002 off one side and nothing on the other. And this case is not worth neck turning and only good for blasting ammo in my AR15 carbine.

The Remington case below has .004 neck thickness variation, and these Remington cases varied from .002 to .008 in neck thickness.


IMG_2136_zps079ece9b.jpg


IMG_2137_zps66bcfc13.jpg


So with a neck thickness gauge like above all I have to do is rotate any case 360 degrees to judge its quality and if the neck is worth turning.

Now the grumpy old mans opinion, too much of what benchrest shooters do to their brass filters down to us poor folk with off the shelf factory rifles. I can buy once fired Lake City military 5.56 cases for .09 cents each which is good enough for my AR15 rifles. But for my Savage .223 I buy higher quality bass and do very little case prep. Meaning many competitive shooter just buy Lapua brass and do not do any neck turning or spend hours prepping their cases.

Buy the Redding case neck thickness gauge above and see what you are getting into before turning your case necks. This one gauge above tells me more about the quality of the brass than any other gauge.

Below a case with .0025 thickness variation and the thing to remember is this thickness variation runs the length of the case. And as you can see below even after turning the case neck the bullet is not aligned with the axis of the bore.

neckcenter_zps94286f86.jpg


Bottom line, you can't make a silk purse from a sows ear, so if you must turn the case necks first find the cases worth the effort.
 
TURNING NECKS OH the joy of it! Most shooters today are moving away from this, using quality brass, that includes the common brands RP WIN FED etc necks do not need to be turned for use in sammi spec (factory) chambers. Target shooters today are chambering the custom barrels with no turn chambering reamers. There was a time when it was thought the turned necks improved accuracy, not so any more with the quality of brass today. It's only required for tight neck chambers, allowing the finished cartridge to have about .003 clearance at the neck to prevent a spike in pressure as the bullet leaves the case.
Enjoy
 
Thanks for the input so far guys


But dont turning necks help to keep an even pressure on a seated bullet, which in turn helps with keeping the ES/SD numbers down, which i guess you can say helps with precision?
 
titch-- said:
Thanks for the input so far guys


But dont turning necks help to keep an even pressure on a seated bullet, which in turn helps with keeping the ES/SD numbers down, which i guess you can say helps with precision?
Click to expand...

Yep.. why more and more precision shooters are moving TOWARDS outside neck turning (ONT).

If you shoot your cases more then once, ONT is important.

If you ever trim your cases, ONT is also needed.

If you want to use Bushing neck dies, ONT is critical.

If you want to maintain consistency in load tuning and tune for the lowest amount of LR vertical, ONT, Annealing and better scales become critical.

I just wished more of my competitors would just use a "no turn" neck and leave as is. This so called no turn chamber has got to be one of the most misunderstood ways to set up your rifle for accuracy work.

Given the range of variations in brass neck thickness even in so called premium brass, the concept is quite silly but it helps those that do not want to put in the effort for peak performance to have an out.

But then many of these shooters will also use a chargemaster and call it good... :)

Jerry

PS to measure the case neckness, a ball or tube micrometer is what you are looking for. Many tool stores offer off shore units for dirt cheap and they are more then accurate enough for this task.
 
to ensure proper bullet, neck and bore alignment, proper fireforming and sizing of the case eliminates any issues with the virgin case. This assumes the chamber and bore are actually inline and surprisingly, many barrels are. The real problems occur elsewhere in the lock up and/or set up.

Why I do not advocate FL sizing.... but that has been hashed over more then once :)

Jerry
 
Cool cool thanks Jerry

I thought maybe some of my reading over at Accurateshooter was a waste of time.

All I have right now is the Hornady Concentricity tool which dont help me with this. I just figured that taking the high spots down for now is a step in the right direction.
 
Grab one of those Redding gauges if you can. It'll tell you thickness and concentricity. X-Reload has then for 139ish. I'm not sure it Jerry can get them. I think Grouse River has them too.
 
From my experience full neck turning is only of benefit when you have a custom (smaller than SAAMI dimension) chamber.

But "neck uni-forming" (or whatever term you use) can have some benefit, though it will be small.

In my previous accuracy journey I went from 7/8 MOA (factory rifle & premium factory ammo) down to consistent .3's (trigger, barrel, bedding job, fully prepped brass, ladder tested load development, etc)


Here is what I did...

Get a neck thickness gauge and use that to see what the average neck thickness is.
Set up neck turning tool to that thickness or slightly below that thickness (but never below the specified thickness for that cartridge).
Turn some cases and measure them. (You may need to fine tune the neck turning settings so use cases that are in your pile off "poor" ones. Perhaps use cases that were too heavy or too light in weight, you did sort by weight earlier right????)
If done correctly you should find that most cases have 50-75% of the neck being shiny (material was removed). Some will be 100% and that's okay. Some will 25% or less material removed and that NOT okay. Put these aside and then measure the thickness of each one. Measure in many places, near the neck, near the opening and all spots in between. If any place on the neck is below the average neck thickness, toss them away. (Or give them to a friend who does action shooting where precision is not the goal).
Depending on the brass quality expect to discard at least 10% (or up to 50% of your cases). Not necessarily discard them but categorize them for use as fouling shots or shots under 200 yards.

Neck turning or uniforming is one of the later things to do in the pursuit of small groups. Or to put it another way as you go deeper into the rabbit hole of precision shooting, the accuracy return on the the investment of time and money becomes less and less.

  1. Good glass (minimum of $750-100)
  2. Crisp trigger
  3. Bedded action
  4. Neck size your fire formed brass
  5. Experiment and find a bullet the barrel likes
  6. Experiment and find a powder (and weight charge) the barrel likes (Ladder or OCW depending on your preference)
  7. Sort brass by brand
  8. Sort brass by weight
  9. Flash hole de-burr
  10. Anneal necks
  11. Experiment and find a seating depth the barrel likes
  12. Neck turn or uniform the neck thickness
  13. Experiment with neck tension (bushing dies)

Somewhere along that list you may want to rebarrel with a decent after-market barrel and start all over again, ( I did this after step no. 10).

Its an enjoyable journey if you are detail oriented.

I was out of precision shooting the last few years but looking to get back into it.



One more item to consider.

Check the runout of the loaded cases and sort accordingly. Any that have excessive runout set aside for "fouling shots" or close range gophers.
 
Thanks for the big write there surfclod

BTW its all for Shilen prefits with all the extra stuff done to the rifle/stock already and with the reloading side of things too.


Might have to pick something like the Redding tool to see what the numbers actually are. Was looking at the RCBS tool which looks like pretty much the same thing.

With just putting the numbers aside for a second here. Just playing around with the tool and seeing that your trimming off lets say 50% of one side of the neck telling you that the brass is thicker on one side and by trimming that off youll kind of see an improvement from doing just that? Does that make sense?

thx
 
CONCENTRICITY GAUGE; If you turn necks you should have this gauge to measure neck thickness and runout on the final handload. TURNING NECKS is an art in itself and takes practise so the gauge is necessary to check thickness of the final product, neck. I do turn necks for 6PPC with a tight chamber, however I use a small lathe to do it. LONG RANGE using a factory chamber most shooters will tell you neck turning is of no benifit. However brass prep is important and that applies to necks they should be clean and smooth inside and out and checked for thickness up to .003 variation is acceptable to me, however they are seperated from that max to min, .003 would be used for practice, foulers and sighters. Now, if I were selling the tools for neck turning my view may be different.
Enjoy
 
titch-- said:
Thanks for the big write there surfclod

BTW its all for Shilen prefits with all the extra stuff done to the rifle/stock already and with the reloading side of things too.


Might have to pick something like the Redding tool to see what the numbers actually are. Was looking at the RCBS tool which looks like pretty much the same thing.

With just putting the numbers aside for a second here. Just playing around with the tool and seeing that your trimming off lets say 50% of one side of the neck telling you that the brass is thicker on one side and by trimming that off youll kind of see an improvement from doing just that? Does that make sense?

thx
Click to expand...

I honestly doubt that you would be able to notice a size difference in a 5 shot groups with necks uniformed vs a 5 shot group of those left as they were from factory.

However if you were to shoot 50 groups (5 shot) of each and then measure them and find and average of each, I suspect you might find a 5% improvement.


For myself it was as much about confidence in my product, (that I had produced the best ammo possible).

That and more trigger time (to test each improvement) which will always improve your shooting.
 
I think some are missing the point. Outside neck turning has benefits at all distances and in any chambering.

Improvements in concentricity and neck tension, ensure chambering clearance are immediate. This allows a reloader to tune their loads with a higher degree of consistency and that leads to better accuracy.

It is one of the steps of reloading that should be standard but many see it as a pain... that is too bad cause depending on the brass they use and the type of sizing die they choose, they may be leaving themselves open to a bunch of tuning issues.

WRT to the time issues to turn cases, I totally concur that hand turning is a pain but I turn my cases on a Forster lathe style set up powered by a 12V driver. I can turn necks about as fast as reloaders can clean a primer pocket.

The irony of course is that cleaning a primer pocket has far less benefit then outside neck turning...

YMMV.

Jerry

PS some very popular brass are overly thick and may actually be thicker then SAAMI spec out of the box.
 
700+ meters, carefully prepared handloads, the best equipment shooter can afford and practice practice and more practice. The shooter has to learn to deal with mirage and develope a good technique, once again it is consistency.
 
b72471 said:
700+ meters, carefully prepared handloads, the best equipment shooter can afford and practice practice and more practice. The shooter has to learn to deal with mirage and develope a good technique, once again it is consistency.
Click to expand...

But you discount outside neck turning which IS part of carefully prepared handloads which can lead to consistency

Confused????

Jerry
PS for LR shooting, save your pennies to get the best scale you can... this really matters. As will proper annealing... and on it goes.
 
What calibers do you want to turn Titch??

I've been a turning fiend these past few weeks.... 6.5x47, .300WSM and .338LM. Getting deadly measurements with the 21st century setup, 99% within .001 neck thickness. Only had to cull 4 pieces out of 250, and one was my f-up.
 
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