308 brass

patrick021

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Nov 17, 2012
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i was thinking about buying a neck turning tool for my 308 brass. what are the advantages or disadvantages to this ?
 
i was thinking about buying a neck turning tool for my 308 brass. what are the advantages or disadvantages to this ?

Patrick021, why do you think you need to neck turn? The reason I ask, is some folks have turned necks before, then had problems with seating bullets due to lack of " grip". Now, if you have a custom chamber, or a tight necked chamber, that is a different story. In those instances, you almost HAVE to neck turn. There are some very nice neck turning tools avail. Sinclair has some very affordable tools for this. Just be sure your needs warrant it!
 
I am getting good groups with my rifle usually had a flyer out of 3 shot groups i thought it was me but i checked the run out on my bullets and some were about 4 thous out. I was thinking that this might help me with my groups.
 
I am getting good groups with my rifle usually had a flyer out of 3 shot groups i thought it was me but i checked the run out on my bullets and some were about 4 thous out. I was thinking that this might help me with my groups.

Runout is not neccsarily caused by necks that need to be cut, rather then it could be in your resizing operation. Sometimes, when FL resizing, when you pull the expander back through the neck, it distorts it somewhat, and seats the bullet off center. That is by far the most common problem. Yeah, .004 is considerable runout. Are you using lube on the inside of your necks when you resize? This will help. Also, try to set you decapper dead center of the die and lock it up in that position. These are only a few things that pop up at me when someone speaks of runout. There are of course a lot of other " possibles" , but those are the most common culprits.
 
i probley dont lube the inside like i should ill try that next to see if it makes a differance thanks
 
The main reason for turning necks is to assure that the neck thickness is consistent in all cases. This would produce similar neck tension case to case which would translate into consistent bullet release. It is just one more method to get each piece of brass as uniform as possible for consistent pressure shot to shot.

If the chamber is not setup for neck turning, especially a factory chamber which is usually quite large, then the necks will get work hardened and will split prematurely. I suppose annealing on a frequent basis could prevent the problem.

If using a FL sizer with a fixed inner neck diameter then the turned necks might not get sized small enough to make proper neck tension. A bushing die would solve that problem.

It is possible to turn the necks just the right amount to be sized by a standard FL die and NOT use the sizer ball. It takes some time to setup the neck turning tool but you can establish a precise press fit between the sized brass and a seated bullet. I used .002". By doing this I didn't have to get a bushing die set. The sized brass has zero runout if the die is of good quality.
 
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