Alex Wheeler
Well-Known Member
Different opinions are fine but there's a lot wrong with this post. Like you said you are not involved in bench rest anymore. Group shooters shoot faster than anyone they are not moving to different points of aim, And everything done in this sport is for accuracy. I do not mean to come across as rude but you are not talking from current experience. I don't know a group shooter that is neck sizing like you state. But aside from that this is about long range hunting and on the bigger cases where we are typically running very high pressure you don't want to allow the web to get to the point that it's causing extraction issues. Because once that happens a lot of times you cannot fix it by full length sizing. If we maintain it every single time with a full length die we will never have extraction problems. That actually goes for any case that is running at the high end of pressure. And in many cases we are running these cases over pressure but they will handle it due to quality components. Neck sizing just will not work at these high pressure levels a fired case will not re chamber. There's no reason to change your methods if they are working for you but we need to be honest about current procedures and why they are being used.The reason benchrest shooters now use FL sizing has nothing to do with accuracy... it has to do with shooting style.
BR shooting has broken into two camps. The "group size" camp, and the "score" camp.
Originally, all BR shooting was "Group". It was easy to measure the group size in the beginning, a steel tape measure was good enough. Then, a vernier was needed, then a vernier with a magnifying glass was needed.
But the darn groups kept getting smaller and smaller, until most local matches were having shooters getting groups in the 0.15" to 0.12" range. Then several judges need to estimate the size and the average was the "official" group size, and people were constantly arguing about the measurements so nothing could move forward until 12 guys measured Ol' Charlie's target.
It took so long to measure the targets that it got impossible to hold a match.
So, "Score" BR evolved. It was easy peasy - five targets, one shot in each target, with standard scoring rings and a teeny dot in the middle for an "X". No arguments about what the score was.
It was possible to shoot a "perfect score" with a rifle that shot 0.3" groups, which would get you laughed off the shooting line at any real "Group" BR match.
Hell, 7 of my 9 woodchuck rifles shoot better than that!
Because Score BR matches are so easy to run, almost no one holds group matches any more - the closest Group matches from my home (in central Connecticut) is a 9 hour drive, so I don't shoot bench rest any more - my BR rifles are now in field stocks.
Almost all "group" BR shooters use neck sizing, or special dies that do not size the body, only the neck and "maybe" touch the shoulder.
The thing about Score shooting is it is done real fast. You go to watch a Score BR match and you see 8 million wind flags on the field, and hardly any shooting, until the wind gets steady, then, holy crap, it is a battle field, with shooters shooting their whole 5 shot string in 15 to 20 seconds, and praying that they got lucky.
With this kind of shooting, there can be no tightness of the case in the chamber - the round must slip in the chamber like a "rat turd into a violin case", or the rifle might shift in the sand bags and all is lost cuz it must be reset in the bags, and by then, the wind has changed.
If you neck size and anneal from time to time, your cases will last forever - which might mean something when premium brass can go for a buck or more each, and you spend a lot of time trimming, annealing and fireforming them.
If you FL size your cases with standard FL dies, you WILL get head separations at some point, it is inevitable.
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