Is a neck tollerance chamber necessary ?

A

abbiboy

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There has to be more....come on guy's

I am in the process of having a 6.5-284 made by hart rifles. I am unsure if i should have the chamber made so that the cases have to be turned. I currently have a 240 wby that has a neck tollerance and i am always having an issue since i don't have the equipment or the experiance to do this. Is it really necessary for accuracy to have this style chamber or can you get just about equal accuracy without this?
 
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If you use 6.5 x 284 Lapua brass I would think there is no advantage in a tight neck chamber...
 
Having Rifle built by Hart..

You should follow the advice of Wally and Bobby. They have been around the block a time or two. They can evaluate your skills and abilities and give you the best advice.

NAT Lambeth
 
It Depends.......

on what the purpose of the Rifle is. If it is a long range Live Varmint Rifle, (where you will be loading a lot of rounds), follow Dennis's advice and go with what we call a minimum spec chamber and use Lapua Brass. The small advantage gained by utilizing a chamber that requires necks to be turned will not be missed.

I know that a Live Varmint Rifle has to meet a certain criteria of accuracy, you have to weigh the hassle of tuning multitudes of necks against what ever gain you might realisically see out at 600+ yards, in the wind, with enough mirage to make a sitting Prairie Dog look like he is jumping up and down.

If you are building a Rifle with some sort of Competition in mind, it always pays to cover every base. Logic dictates that having perfect necks is a desireable trait. Not only does it insure that the round is centered as best as possible, it also provides a consistant neck tention, which is probably as big of factor as having the round centered when it comes to extreme accuracy.

Tell us something else about the Rifle. If you are simply having Hart install a premium barrel on a Factory Action that is not trued, then dropped into a stock that does not lend its self to extreme accuracy shooting, then you will never see the advantage that turning necks will bring.

But, if you do go all the way, (action, trigger, stock, bedding, etc.), then every time a shot does not go where you think it should, you will be saying, "if I had only got a tight neck chamber".

Granted, The Harts can evaluate your current situation, but shooters who are involved in Extreme Accuracy tend to improve at a rapid pace. It won't take but a coupleof trips to the range for you to be discouraged if your Rifle does not live up to what ever expectations you have.

Lets put it this way. The first time you are at the range with your buddies, and having a "friendly" afternoon of "group comparison", and yours don't quite measure up, you will be on the phone Monday Morning looking for an upgrade.

It's the nature of this game. Whether it's the last shot at The Super Shoot, or the last shot to determine who buys lunch at the local range. We are a competitive bunch.........jackie
 
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One other thing...
While it may seem to you that turning necks is a big deal, it really isn't difficult, and while I would never set up a varmint or big game rifle so that it was necessary, for a target rifle that is to be shot from the bench, I would. If that is what you are building, maybe it is time to acquire a few tools and a new skill.

As for that .240, there are such things as neck reamers, not for the brass, but for the chamber. Greg Tannel, of Gre-Tan rifles, has a finely graduated set of these, and the skill to open up a neck that is too small for its intended purpose.
 
Thank you all for the tips. The gun will be mainly a varmint rig but i wouldn't rule out the desire for some great groups at the bench. I will probably go with the standard chamber but also looking into gaining some skills when it comes to neck turning.

Ty jerry
 
The dirty little secret is, nobody has ever proven one way or the other about turned brass and tight necks. Could just be that a lot of folks don't know about that little inconvenient fact, but it is really true.


Many of us are disabused of the idea of thinking for ourselves. Anybody that steps outside of the crowd and experiments for themselves had better keep it to themselves, or run the risk of being shouted down.

Many of the things that are down were for a cure for other problems, like brass that was not straight to start with. Why do you think that the shorter cases win out over the longer ones?:D
 
If this be so than what are the most important keys to accuracy when it come to the gun and the reloading.

Enlighten me.............
 
trigger time

An excellent trigger is one of the keys to small groups. Just get used to the idea of $200 for the trigger. For varmint hunting it is critical that the gun goes off when the brain sees the crosshairs and varmint lined up. If you have to concentrate on squeezing the trigger it messes with your success.
 
If you shoot single shot and set your bullets so they are lightly into the lands the neck tension is not much of an issue. In this case a tight neck with brassed turned to match does not add much to the precision.

However, that said, I follow the practices as suggest above by Jackie.

Octopus
 
Al,
Let me see... to my knowledge, every single person that shoots short range Benchrest, with any degree of success, shoots tight necked chambers that require neck turning, and against that you stack …. ?

Broad statements as to the folly of others do occasionally require more in the way of substantiation than just writing the words, if they are to be seriously. Please share with us your definitive experience.
Boyd
 
A good way to center the bullet to the OR with a standard chamber neck is to neck size only and only two thirds of the neck. The still expanded rear one third centers the neck of the case in the chamber neck as effectively as a closely fitted chamber neck.
Its best if you marked the rim and rotated each case 180 degrees between first and second firing so the case will be evenly expanded.

if fired cases don't chamber easily enough when reloaded i dry fire the rifle on the just fired empty before extracting it, this micro sizes the fired case to the chamber. Only good if your rifle action type has a cocking knob though.

Maybe not entirely suitable for all cartridge or action types but its worked very well for me.

PS
Turning a neck can insure even neck wall thickness.
 
Boyd Allen said:
Al,
Let me see... to my knowledge, every single person that shoots short range Benchrest, with any degree of success, shoots tight necked chambers that require neck turning, and against that you stack …. ?

Broad statements as to the folly of others do occasionally require more in the way of substantiation than just writing the words, if they are to be seriously. Please share with us your definitive experience.
Boyd
Click to expand...



Boyd years ago a few shooters were shooting in major competitions matches using the standard .220 Russian brass from Lapua. No neck turn, no changes in the brass from out of the box. This was in the 90's. Every one of these shooter had won in major competition. What were the findings?

Fast forward to today. the same thing is going on again with no turn necks, but now it has suddenly been discovered by a broader range of shooters.

It is not a difficult operation to open up a good shooting chambered tight neck chamber to a standard neck with no turn necks. As stated above if you have good straight brass to start with, where is the gain?

The purpose of neck turning is suppose to be due to the unevenness of the wall thickness of the neck material, if you don't have any unevenness, where is the gain? Neck tension can still maintained with bushings of different sizes.

No matter which side of this argument you fall on, the purpose still remains the same and that is uneven neck tension. If you don't have any, then why bother turning necks in the first place?

Longer case and the banana shape, not unknown and think about this. A lot of shooters when this got started where using longer cases , there were no PPC's and no Lapua brass. Some folks like L.E. WILSON were using the 30.06 in there bench rest rifles and winning. Was this brass as straight as the shorter PPC? Extrusions can not be ruled out as a cause of uneven brass, today the same can be seen with longer cases and even shorter cases when you spin them in a case spinner.

At least I know from spinning cases and measuring necks. So it all starts with the brass. Cure for problems only are after the fact.
 
Lou Murdica addressed this issue in the last year or so. As you may know, he is a top level shooter, has his own tunnel, and tests a lot. His last advice was to turn, this after extensive testing. You need to be careful when using history. Look at the aggs, then and now. If you are talking to someone who is not willing to go the entire distance to maximize accuracy, and the vast majority are not, then you might be all right in saying that with Lapua brass, and good chamber, and FL die design coordination, that a no turn, close neck chamber would be OK, but in short range Benchrest, especially when conditions are favorable, it simply does not seem to be the case. On the other hand, you could prove me wrong.:D
 
I first started sizing only two thirds of the neck after reading of tests done on Pull strength. No matter how good the case, pull strength varied. The less of the neck sized the less the variation in pull strength.

This with crimping eliminated first of all.
 
I would remind every reader of this post to try for yourself, before taking anybody's word for anything. It does not matter where in the life of a barrel you test from, starting with a tight neck chamber and open up the neck to standard. Using the same lot of brass, you can sure as heck test with aggs all you want to prove to yourself and come to your own conclusions. :D
 
The argument for "no-neck turning" set-ups ASSumes that the brass manufacturer will always maintain consistent caseneck dimensions and uniform neck thickness.
Well, under todays ecomomy QC seems to be on the bottom of the priority list.
I want to control as many aspects in my reloading regimen as possible......therefore I will continue to neck-turn for cases used in competition.

Perhaps Lapua has spoiled us.....but what happens if we can't get their brass anymore....or they decide not to market a certain cartridge anymore (such as was done to their .222 brass where they decided there was not enough of a market in the USA and did not offer it here for over a year).
 
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Big Al said:
Boyd years ago a few shooters were shooting in major competitions matches using the standard .220 Russian brass from Lapua. No neck turn, no changes in the brass from out of the box. This was in the 90's. Every one of these shooter had won in major competition. What were the findings?

At least I know from spinning cases and measuring necks. So it all starts with the brass. Cure for problems only are after the fact.
Click to expand...

When the 220 Russian was being used in that application, they were not trying for zero groups and low teen aggs.
 
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