Hello to all, new here, hope everyone is good! Been necksizing with a lee collet die and I love it. Found a sweet load. Brass (308) starting to get tight in chambering. Bought a redding body die, started trying chamber back to die technique. Got mad and resized completely! Question: will I need to tweak my sweet load now that I have resized case completely? If so powder up or down? Or any tips would be appreciated? Thanks
load it up n shoot, you may want to check your case length after firing though, it may grow a little.
Best thing I ever did: buy full length size dies. Pick a brass brand and stick with it. Send your sizer dies back to manufacturer with a dummy round, preferably your bullet of choice. Have them hone the neck of your die to 0.003 less than your loaded dummy. Don't use the expander button/ball when resizing your cases. Runout is about non-existent. Size them, trim them, deburr, and load them again. I anneal after every 2-3 firings now. Bonus #2 is if you can have a barrel chambered with a neck about 0.002 to 0.004 greater than your dummy round. So, when sizing again, there is only 5 to 7 thousandths of total neck change from fired to sized case. This greatly reduced work hardening of the case and extends its life. I'm a fan of full length sizing. You can run into concentricity issues with a neck sizer die while using the expander, unless your dies are custom made.
Several years ago I moved to full length sizing dyes after using neck dyes for many years. I'm partial to the Redding competition bushing dyes. No tight cases after repeated firings using a neck dye, and very consistent results. I think with each firing when using the neck dye, the case expands a little until you begin to feel it when closing the bolt. The issue is that the cases tend to do this at different rates which means the case volume may be inconsistent from round to round. Set headspace 1-2 thousandths less than the fired case. I do use the expander with some of my loads, usually with Lapua brass which has a very consistent neck thickness. The key is to leave a slight space when setting the bushing, and a slight play with the expander plug rod. I have had no problem keeping my run outs under .002".
That's really good. With Lapua and most Norma, and not using the expander, my needle on my gauge pretty much doesn't even wiggle. With Win brass, I get up to .002. I don't think I'd see a difference with any of the shots with even 2 thousandths runout compared to zero. There's been days when I'm busy prepping brass and I get to the point where I'm tired of doing it and just want to go to new brass!
Thanks guys, loaded 6 rounds with 3 w/.5 grain over and 3 w/ .5 grain under my pet load! Both shot under .4" at 100! Guess I'll stay there!! I think I'll resize everytime with body die and NS wit my collet! Thanks for the input!
I don't know for sure but I think runout plays a greater role when you load close to the lands. I can remember when I was doing a lot of shooting with my 308 using Federsl GM Match brass which I had a large supply. Run outs were all over the place, as high as .010", no matter what I did to it. I thought it was very poor brass, but it gave excellent results. With my MilSpec seating depth of +.150" it made no difference at all with 168/175 SMK's. That rifle shot .25-.4 MOA out at 600 yards very consistently. I did nothing to the brass except make sure the length was OK. The results were identical to those achieved with Lapua brass with run outs of .002" or less, and meticulously prepared. It's a very different story with my 6.5x284, 338, and 260 using VLD's closer to the lands. Brass prep makes a difference with group size and ES.
Boots once told me he was at a shoot and accidentally shot his "cull" rounds for a group where runout was unacceptable but it turned out that string was his best or one of his best that day at 600 yards. Of course in this instance he and I were talking about the finished loaded round and I do not recall if he was including case runout prior to bullet seating.
