Neck Turning

[Fox72]

I am interested to find out the correct method or accepted for turning case necks. I have read several ways but they seem to contradict each other. I have a RCBS neck turner and a Lyman neck micrometer. The instructions do not give a minimum allowed thickness for cases. I guess I just want to err on the side of caution. Thanks.

Never cut below .014" I always say unless your chamber is made for that. I ahve seen bad brass where it varies .012 to .018", but I will stop at .014. You go much below that, and you will ahve to buy bushing dies to size your neck enough to put enough tension to hold your bullets. I like the sinclair kit the best.

But to do it properly, you have to first size all necks with a neck expander mandrel to be accepted to your neck turner, then you have to neck turn, thenneck size again cause most likely you necks are too loose to hold bullets and all that workin of the necks has probably knocked them out of round. Not always the case however and you can modify your tools to bypass that step. Some suggest annealing at that point. I don't.

Next fireform, and now you should have some straight even concentrisic necks. I did it fora whilefor some rounds and life got more and more complicated. Won't do it again unless i have a custom chamber. Instead, I will buy bulk brass and cull for good necks, or buy quality brass if available. So much work and hard on the brass.

[Roskoe]

It's a pretty good idea to see how big the neck of your chamber is before turning necks - unless you are just turning them only the minimum necessary to get them consistent. Normally, I like to see the chamber's neck about .005 bigger than the neck diameter of a loaded round. Any more and you unduly stress the necks in the resizing process - necks crack early in the process from work hardening, and accuracy is slightly compromised. Any less and you can get into trouble with clearances ona hunting rifle. I have built some bench rest guns where the neck wall thickness was only .008 - and the neck of a loaded round was only .001 smaller than the reamer (6MM PPC); but this is a highly specialized situation with very touchy tolerances.

I do my neck turning on a lathe - using the method prescribed by Mike Bryant. And only on a couple of calibers. The rest shoot good enough for their intended purpose without neck turning. One additional note: some brass is so consistent in the neck thickness that, unless there is a clearance issue that need to be addressed, neck turning is not necessary for most applications. Remington and Winchester brass are not on that list.

[Solitary Man]

I believe the generally accepted method for neck turning brass for a factory chambered rifle is to turn it so that approximately 75% of the neck is turned. That is, about 25% of the neck is not touched at all by the neck turner. I say "generally accepted" because in all my research on this, the 75/25 ratio seemed to be mentioned in practically everything authoritative I was able to find on this subject. If you turn the neck down too much and shoot the brass in a loose factory chamber you risk the neck stretching too much and prematurely splitting.

Personally, unless you're shooting competitive benchrest, I don't see much benefit in neck turning brass. I say that having done it myself. Iown a K & N neck turner, which does a great job BTW. What makes more sense to me is to measure the neck thickness of your brass and sort it intobatches so that the necks of a particular batch differ no more than .001" of each other. Honestly though, I don't even like to do that anymore either, so I just fork over the extra money for Lapua (and here lately Nosler) brass which in my experience tends to be quite uniform from one piece to the next.

[handloader1]

I turn my necks a little less than Solitary Man. I turn them to 50%. Good luck.

[#40Fan]

When I started turning necks I would turn each one individually. If it took more cutting to make one case's neck even I would cut more. I didn't just set the turner to take 75% of the material off of most necks. It took a while and the thicknesses aren't the same for each case, but I haven't had any problems. Now...whether it helped with accuracy, I couldn't tell. Will I do it with my next batch of brass??....not sure yet.