freddiej
Well-Known Member
Russ, I have read and seen about everything in the precision reloading realm. let me explain my philosophy of all of this. your work begins when you have once fired cases. nothing is the same in each case once they are fired once. I have seen it way too many times before. my practical knowledge comes from the late 1980's and the early 1990's. I will start with 1986: at that time I was just 16 and loved long range shooting. I went to the not so local range where I shot 22LR comps. I would get done with my comps and wander over to the "big boys" side and watch the 600 to 1,000 yard guys.. also the bench rest guys. I started asking more questions than I got answers. one summer day when I was 17 I spied an old genteel man in a white straw hat sitting down to start setting up, I helped as he seemed to be too weak to heave his gun up on the bench. he was grateful. Kenny and I became instant friends. He even lived on the other side of the small town I resided in. Ken was a benchrest fanatic. his practice range was his back yard. he showed me how he prepped brass. his brother another man I knew very well, neighbor, was a long range shooter. both had their special way of prepping brass. I learned from both. It seems that even RCBS has dropped some of the tools that I use for long range and precision brass prepping. I am not going to get into neck reaming versus neck turning. they both do about the same thing and one does it better than the other in my 33 years of precision and long range precision shooting. to directly answer one of your questions. no matter what brass you have.. either neck turn each piece or neck ream each piece. it is the only way to uniform you brass necks for precision shooting. as an example my 17 Rem would never shoot under 1.5" with any load I tried. after doing everything else I ordered a neck reaming die. I reamed all 600 pieces of brass and used the same exact 24.6 grains of powder that got me 1.5" groups and came away with 0.298" groups at 100 yards. mind you I am not an C to C guy I am a edge to edge guy. my groups at 200 yards were 0.502" I think enough said about the importance of uniform/concentric necks.
so now you understand my insistence about prep of your brass. one little operation made such an improvement that I was hooked on neck reaming my cases. while in Gunsmithing school I was curious what neck turning would do. I am so sorry I ever neck turned my 270 Win cases to see what that would do. Some people can do it. I can not. I ruined too many Lapua and Norma cases that were my prized hunting cases. I have none left but I am going to buy more one day.
so saying all that. before you sort cases, before you even start prepping cases, shoot them once in your gun and then start really prepping the cases. a once fired case acts so much differently than a virgin case. I can not even list the ways they change from virgin to once fired. just remember your brass stretches the most on it's first firing so trim after firing it for the first time.
what I do and did for long range precision shooting is this:
this is after sizing my brass to -0.002" below my chamber (if you do not know how to gauge your chamber let me know I will tell you how)
cut to a uniform length (this does not mean "trim to" length this means pick a length and trim to that. I use max length of case; for some reason I settled on that and use it to this day.
next, I made a tool to uniform and center my flash holes, I am a gunsmith and I was a pretty good machinist in my early 20's. this means my flash holes are 0.005" bigger than the largest production case. I find this non-detrimental to your primers unless you are doing BR, the cases demand BR primers so use them.
I neck ream when I can get the ream and die combo. this makes most every piece of brass you want to use very uniform enough for at least practice.
next I water volume each case. but there are some that just weigh the case.. I used to do both just to be sure. I still weigh and water volume the cases.
use a sliding head seating die.. RCBS makes them, Redding makes them, Hornady makes them and I think one other maker has them but I can not remember whom that is. I depend on Redding match and Hornady. side note; my 17 rem dies are Hornady that I bought on a whim 28 years ago. 13 years before I needed them.
the last thing I do is I never crimp my rifle brass.
I have used the consentricity gauges for my ammo. they got me maybe 2" at 1,000 yards. it kept me ****ing off the older guys that had been doing it for a long time. so use them, they do help.
as for the mouth thickness and consentricity.. you should know where I stand by now.
recently I have begun to uniform the depth of my primer pockets and it seems to make better hunting ammo for my friends. I have started doing this to my own hunting ammo 270WSM and others.
After prepping your brass and uniforming it, then segregate by weight. find the biggest weight group and use that for your match or hunting load development. weight groups can have a slim or wide weight bracket, you sent that for yourself. Some of my old 1,000 yard and BR friends, and I made lots, will only use a bracket of 0.1 grain. example.. 98.0 to 98.1 grain cases. the heavier the case the less the volume of the case or in some instances, a bubble or weak spot in the case.
Now given all this information and I know there are lots of critics of what I have said; I just do not care what people say about my methods. they darn near got me a world's record back in 1994. The key axiom of precision shooting is this, "uniformity wins matches; hap-hazard DQ's in quals." the more uniform your cases are after you prep them the better your groups will be. that is the bottom line. Use what I have told you and feel free to use one thing and not another. it is all up to you how much work you want to put into this endeavor of precision reloading and shooting.
in order of how much accuracy is gained by each procedure;
neck uniformity is king #1 in my book. the best thing you can do for your ammo
Uniform weight of the case and uniform volume
uniform flash holes
concentricity of ammo.
later suckers.. I have to get back to work.. a sick 1911 with feeding issues and a old S&W K-frame needs some slicking up and tuning.
so now you understand my insistence about prep of your brass. one little operation made such an improvement that I was hooked on neck reaming my cases. while in Gunsmithing school I was curious what neck turning would do. I am so sorry I ever neck turned my 270 Win cases to see what that would do. Some people can do it. I can not. I ruined too many Lapua and Norma cases that were my prized hunting cases. I have none left but I am going to buy more one day.
so saying all that. before you sort cases, before you even start prepping cases, shoot them once in your gun and then start really prepping the cases. a once fired case acts so much differently than a virgin case. I can not even list the ways they change from virgin to once fired. just remember your brass stretches the most on it's first firing so trim after firing it for the first time.
what I do and did for long range precision shooting is this:
this is after sizing my brass to -0.002" below my chamber (if you do not know how to gauge your chamber let me know I will tell you how)
cut to a uniform length (this does not mean "trim to" length this means pick a length and trim to that. I use max length of case; for some reason I settled on that and use it to this day.
next, I made a tool to uniform and center my flash holes, I am a gunsmith and I was a pretty good machinist in my early 20's. this means my flash holes are 0.005" bigger than the largest production case. I find this non-detrimental to your primers unless you are doing BR, the cases demand BR primers so use them.
I neck ream when I can get the ream and die combo. this makes most every piece of brass you want to use very uniform enough for at least practice.
next I water volume each case. but there are some that just weigh the case.. I used to do both just to be sure. I still weigh and water volume the cases.
use a sliding head seating die.. RCBS makes them, Redding makes them, Hornady makes them and I think one other maker has them but I can not remember whom that is. I depend on Redding match and Hornady. side note; my 17 rem dies are Hornady that I bought on a whim 28 years ago. 13 years before I needed them.
the last thing I do is I never crimp my rifle brass.
I have used the consentricity gauges for my ammo. they got me maybe 2" at 1,000 yards. it kept me ****ing off the older guys that had been doing it for a long time. so use them, they do help.
as for the mouth thickness and consentricity.. you should know where I stand by now.
recently I have begun to uniform the depth of my primer pockets and it seems to make better hunting ammo for my friends. I have started doing this to my own hunting ammo 270WSM and others.
After prepping your brass and uniforming it, then segregate by weight. find the biggest weight group and use that for your match or hunting load development. weight groups can have a slim or wide weight bracket, you sent that for yourself. Some of my old 1,000 yard and BR friends, and I made lots, will only use a bracket of 0.1 grain. example.. 98.0 to 98.1 grain cases. the heavier the case the less the volume of the case or in some instances, a bubble or weak spot in the case.
Now given all this information and I know there are lots of critics of what I have said; I just do not care what people say about my methods. they darn near got me a world's record back in 1994. The key axiom of precision shooting is this, "uniformity wins matches; hap-hazard DQ's in quals." the more uniform your cases are after you prep them the better your groups will be. that is the bottom line. Use what I have told you and feel free to use one thing and not another. it is all up to you how much work you want to put into this endeavor of precision reloading and shooting.
in order of how much accuracy is gained by each procedure;
neck uniformity is king #1 in my book. the best thing you can do for your ammo
Uniform weight of the case and uniform volume
uniform flash holes
concentricity of ammo.
later suckers.. I have to get back to work.. a sick 1911 with feeding issues and a old S&W K-frame needs some slicking up and tuning.
