Neck vs FL Sizing for 300winmag

J

Jig Stick

Guest
Hello guys. I recently picked up my new rifle. It is a 300 win mag, Bat heavy repeater action, McMillan Adj A3-5 stock, Krieger 1:10 twist 26in barrel, Jewel Trigger, Badger bottom metal and rings, and a leupold Mark 4 scope. Im shooting 208g Hornay Amax, Winchester brass, CCI magnum rifle primers, and 71 grains of Reloader 22. My gun is shooting well under 1 MOA. I just went through 50 pieces of virgin brass, and im getting ready to reload them for their 2nd firing. My goal was to bump the shoulder back 0.001 or 0.002, and just neck size. What do you guys recommend to achieve best accuracy and consistency? This, or FL size?

My brass prep consists of neck turning, inside and outside deburring, flash hole deburring, primer uniforming, and seating my Amax 0.010 from the jam. Any advice would be greatly appreciated
 
neck size only till they start to get hard to close the bolt on....no bump.
get the belted mag small base die( well its something like that ) do a search.....
its a die thast slips a collet over your brass, down at the belt area and allows one to size where regular dies do not.
the 600/1000yd forum is a good source of data for what you are doing.
i use h4831 with 208 a max hbn coated, 30 in bbl ....0.31x at 200 yds...
mike in co
 
Jig Stick said:
Hello guys. I recently picked up my new rifle. It is a 300 win mag, Bat heavy repeater action, McMillan Adj A3-5 stock, Krieger 1:10 twist 26in barrel, Jewel Trigger, Badger bottom metal and rings, and a leupold Mark 4 scope. Im shooting 208g Hornay Amax, Winchester brass, CCI magnum rifle primers, and 71 grains of Reloader 22. My gun is shooting well under 1 MOA. I just went through 50 pieces of virgin brass, and im getting ready to reload them for their 2nd firing. My goal was to bump the shoulder back 0.001 or 0.002, and just neck size. What do you guys recommend to achieve best accuracy and consistency? This, or FL size?

My brass prep consists of neck turning, inside and outside deburring, flash hole deburring, primer uniforming, and seating my Amax 0.010 from the jam. Any advice would be greatly appreciated
Click to expand...

Willis collet die http://larrywillis.com/
 
So GG, please explain how one goes about getting a "real benchrester's die" for the 300WM :) and where.

Then tell us how often you've resized a belted mag to "real benchrester" spec's......since you have an agenda re "fitness" on this board. Give us your cred's.



There are a bunch of us who'd like you to share your knowledge re belted mags and "BR resizing."

al
 
You actually use a simple sliding die to repeatedly resize a 300WM for competition?? I've never been able to get that to work, 3-4 reloads and the area above the belt is irreparably buggered.

Hmmmm, I'll have to do some more testing. Maybe I've been steering dozens of shooters WRONG in sending them away from belted mags.

I've turned belts off

I've used collets

and I've switched chamberings to non-belted mags just for this reason...... but you're now telling me you can make it work?


Or is this a friggin' huntin' rifle?

al
 
Here is the gun Im shooting. It was made by Dave Bruno. And its a tack driver.



I want to use this gun to hunt primarily, and maybe start some F class eventually. So you think I should be looking at some Redding collet dies? Right now Im using RCBS FL and Neck dies.
 
goodgrouper said:
What do you mean "irreparably buggered"?
I've got 30 to 40 firings on each of my brass with no ill effects. In fact, been using that same brass since 1997.
Click to expand...

"irreparably buggered" means the brass wads up ahead of the belt.... If you've got 30-40 firings on 300WM cases Ima' go make me a sizing die and try it again! It's been over ten years and I wasn't as used to fitted dies back then.... I'd love to be wrong on this one, it opens up a whole world of cases.

al
 
Bob Kingsbury said:
Al, turn the belts off and have a resize reamer made without the belt. I plan on that in the next few months.
Click to expand...

Bob, BTDT, hate it :)

I just switch cases (BTDT too!! Haven't owned nor spec'd nor built a belted case since the 90's......)

Incidentally this whole problem is the basis or a LOT of really hard-to-get chamberings, like Tooley's BooBoo stuff.

But goodgrouper is telling us it isn't a problem! I'd better go spend some money before others lose money and time over this. Mayhap I've been misled by myself eh!

LOL

al
 
Jig Stick said:
Here is the gun Im shooting. It was made by Dave Bruno. And its a tack driver.

I want to use this gun to hunt primarily, and maybe start some F class eventually. So you think I should be looking at some Redding collet dies? Right now Im using RCBS FL and Neck dies.
Click to expand...

looks like your thread has turned off coarse.

Nice rifle. Now Iam no big time BR shooter, but i can offer some things I have found on the hunting subject. Ill assume by the rifle and cartridge your going after medium and large game at reasonable ranges. First, your going to want to treat the match ammo completely different than your hunting ammo. To answer your question about FL sizing, yes I do it on all my hunting brass. The emphisis being on the load reload cycle. NO hard bolt drop, or lift allowed. Redding has some nice dies that may work great for you. Second, every rifle shoots different bullets differently, they also can be finiky on the reload cycle. Put together a mags woth of ammo and cycle it over and over. No jams, no missfeeds allowed. and dont cheat and tap all the ammo to the rear of the mag. Neck tension in a hunting/tactical rifle is a completely different from a target rifle. The 2 thousands BR shooters use may not be enough for your rifle in the field. Remember, these rounds will spend alot of time in a magazine geting banged around. Some will spend some time at the bottom of the mag while rounds above them have been fired and the mag reloaded. Recoil WILL drive the bullet deeper into the brass without enough neck tension. This can create compressed loads, and if your in the top of the load window, really bad effects. I found out the hard way why Remmy fact 7 ultra ammo is crimped.

Now heres the really important part, Concentrate on your cold bore shot. Iam not talking about the first one from every group or after cleaning from firing a group. Iam talking about that very first one of the day after it was cleaned the night before and sat ovenight in the truck or in the tent. This is the one that will most resemble what your going to get in the field, and it needs to be the same day in day out. For hunting this is THE one shot that will bring home the trophy, or leave you tracking an animal all night long. The next important one is the follow up. Again you have to know where that one is going. Useing one target for these first shots of the day,for five 5 times will tell you alot about your rifle, ammo, shooter combination.

Sum it up:
A: the ammo has to cycle flawlessly in your rifle
B: the first two shots have to be the same day to day and you have to know what the different hold will be for them.

Dont expect your hunting loads to shoot as small a groups as your match ammo. Sometimes you get lucky though, and then your in heaven. With a Bruno Tactical rifle, there is no reason you shouldnt find a hunting combo that stay sub MOA or better.

These are just some things I have found that work for me. Your results may differ and there will be others with different opinions and ways. Weed through the chaff and find what works for you.

Ill leave the BR and match stuff to the estimed experts.
 
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First of all, let me say that highseas, has infinitely more game hunting experience than I. Secondly, I have some experience helping friends work up loads for rifles such as yours, rifles that really shoot well, built from premium components. One little detail that gets overlooked is that cases do not fire form to their maximum shoulder to head dimension on one firing, so using a once fired case as a reference for bumping makes no sense to me. Another thing that you might want to do is to make sure that you have a problem before trying to fix it. I have no doubt that Al has had the problem that he described (or that he is knowledgeable, a fine shot, and an experienced reloader), but you may not. My friends have not. If they had, I would have recommended one of the dies that Larry Willis makes. One more thing worth noting is how much belted case shoulders are blown forward on their first firing. I have checked a couple of factory rifles, and they ran about .021. If you want a custom FL die, Neil Jones makes good ones. The less you move your brass when resizing, the longer it will last, and the straighter it will stay. One other thing that I have run into with some big cases is lack of uniformity in factory annealing causing quite a bit of variation in bump, with the same die setting. We solved this with an annealing machine, and using Templaq to do a careful setup. That fixed the problem. As far as neck sizing till they get tight, and then FL goes, I think that this approach came about because of FL dies that were way too small, out of recognition of the damage to accuracy that using such dies on a chamber of average dimensions can cause. With a properly fitting FL die, I don't think that FL sizing every time should cause any problems, and may in fact increase average accuracy. In any case, good luck with the new rifle.
 
So I should reload my 1x fired brass again to blow it out more before i start taking OAL measurements to determine how much I want to push the shoulder back? My 208g AMAX target loads, seated 0.010 from the jam still feed nicely from my AICS magazines. I have determined that these bullets like even more jump, and will be seating them a little deeper. My hunting loads are Barnes Tipped Triple Shocks, and they like ALOT of jump. My overall goal is to keep my brass as blown out as possible to maintain that nice chamber fit, both for my target loads and hunting loads. Im just confused on what dies work brass the least. It sounds like I should neck size until the brass grows too much and starts getting tough to load and extract, and then run the brass through a body die to FL size the body only, then use a shoulder bumping neck die to resize the neck and adjust the shoulder, and then finally run it through the Larry Willis die to take care of bulge above the belt? Am I on the right page? I am familiar will annealing and using concentricity gauges. The info you guys are giving me is awesome. Please keep it coming
 
Yo Jiggie...... what I do is don't resize AT ALL until the brass starts to show resistance. You can often fire a case 3-4 times before it gets tight. Now resize it back to exactly the feel you want. I like just enough feel to take the slack from the system, seat the lugs.

al
 
i'm fairly new to the 300 wm at full loads.
but
i neck size only , no bump
i used the larry die on all my brass after load work up.
i think if you use the larry die,and neck size your brass may chamber...so try that before the fl stuff.
i have not fl sized yet.
mike in co
 
Chuckling....... I misunderstood. I thought he said HUNTING rifle and MAYBE a F-class rifle. The kind that spends days and weeks on ones back getting drug through the weeds and crud. Because the kind of hunting rifle I was thinking of needs a little slack to make room for all the interesting stuff that seems to find its way into an action, and I wont even go into all what seems to get into a box mag. Amazing how many guys will keep their rifle spotless and never open a mag and clean it. Cause if you take that tight chamberd brass on a hunt you either paid 10-50 large for, or have a few hundred hours into tracking a rare trophy, you might be looking at that rifle like its worthless when you jam a round. Or worse, when your buddy or a PH smugly looks over and says "would you like to use mine?" Been there, done that, sold the worthless POS I paid a small fortune for.
 
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