Hi Folks,

I have only been reloading for about 5 years. I started out reloading 30-06 Springfield brass for my Dad's old 1903-A3. I developed a bad flinch firing Dad's deer rifle. I eventually bought a bolt action rifle cambered for .243 WIN cartridges. This rifle's recoil is about one half of my Dad's rifle. Compared to .243 cases, the 30-06 necks are longer and thicker. To my way of thinking this probably makes it easier and more consistent to seat bullets for the 30-06. For my .243 rifle, I first purchased 200 cases manufactured by Winchester and then more recently another 200 cases manufactured by Starline. The Starline brass seems to be more variable than the Winchester brass.

I usually remove the spent primers and clean my fired cases within a few days of going to the rifle range. I keep the brass separated in zip lock bags sorted by the number of times the brass has been fired and the manufacturer. Later when I was ready to re-load another batch (usually 25 cases or sometimes 50 cases), I would look though my collection of zip lock bags and select a bag contains a few more cases than I would need. When I first started re-loading .243 WIN cases, I was mostly concerned about the condition of the cases and that they passed my L. E. Wilson Case Gauge tests.

A few years later after I purchased the Starline brass, I wanted to produce more consistent re-loads. I became very anal and started sorting my brass by weight in hopes that the case weight would be a good substitute for case volume. I decided I only needed to "Neck Size" my brass since I was only re-loading my fired cases for just one rifle. Later, I started noticing the differences between thickness of the brass in the necks of the Winchester and Starline brass. I began wondering how that affected the neck tension when a bullet was seated. This was becoming a long and deep rabbit hole. I suspected the experts knew all the answers, but it had to be a problem for us mere mortals on a restricted budget to afford all the hardware needed to measure and sort brass by some quick method that would produce consistent neck tensions. Using my micrometer was very slow and more variable than I suspected. So... I purchased a few more items: Sinclair 0.241" and 0.242" mandrels to quickly measure/sort the inside diameter of my resized case necks and three of Redding's bushings (0.270", 0.271" and 0.272") to quickly measure/sort the outside diameter of my resized case necks. This works sort of... my group precision has improved a little bit (previously about 3.0 inch groups of 4 at 200 yards and now about 2.5 to 2.0 inch groups of 4 at 200 yard). Don't laugh... that's probably pretty good for a fat old man who can only afford an entry level rifle.

There must be a better way and is all this sorting even necessary? Do you have any suggestions?

Thank You,
Ron