When do you neck turn?

M

Mirage416

New member
I would like to get an idea of when you feel the best time to neck turn is.

Should you always neck turn after the fireforming? That is what I have mostly read, but I noticed a few people mention that they do it before fireforming. So I'm trying to get an idea about when it is necessary to neck turn before the fireforming.

On another note, I am also trying to decide on a neck wall thickness to use, since I will need to have a reamer made for me. Is there a certain wall thickness or maybe a small range of thicknesses that would be a good choice to use for a .308 caliber case? I am working with the 30AR.

I appreciate any help. ;)
 
I ass-u-me you are talking about Sammi .308 in a factory chamber, not custom. That said, back in the day I was shooting a lot of prairie poodles w/ a factory .223, I cleaned up the neck of all my brass. By that, I mean I took a very light cut on the necks of all the cases I was reloading, first time after I fired the case. Not a full circumference cut, just enuf to get the necks pretty uniform. I do not have a wall thickness on the tip of "tongue" right at the moment, but I do recall that once in a while some of the military brass, LC as I recall, would cut all the way around. Tended to be thicker. Once I set the cutter on my 22 neck turner, I have never changed it. That .223 is the only 22 I do any case work for.
 
Sorry, the round I am working with is actually a wildcat on the 30 Rem AR case. It is a higher pressure round than the 308 Win.
 
If you have a tight neck chamber reamer and your round requires turning, there is no other way than to have the necks turned before you fire them... The only other way is to have a fireforming barrel, which means another reamer, with a larger diameter neck to fire in , to straighten the brass before turning, then resize and use them in your match barrel. That is a lot of extra expense, with promise of very little gain. I would just turn to the required dimension before fireforming.

If your chamber is not a "tightneck" chamber, why are you worried about it?

Paul
 
Mirage -

Howdy !

I agree w/ Dave.

I'd be suprised if your wildcat cases formed w/ perfectly concentric necks; esp with uniform neck wall thickness.

Give all the cases a very light skim-trim, just enough to remove " orange peel " part-way around the necks. This will give you a good visual, as to how non-uniform
their necks might be.

I have wildcatted my fair share, and have run necks in .224" cal, 6mm cal, and .358 calibre that were 9 1/2 - 10 thousandths thick. These always worked fine.
I only shoulder bump and neck size my accuracy rifle brass, and not FL size.

If neck wall thickness is correctly matched to chamber the reamer cuts, and one uses bushing NS dies; then there's a whole host of potentially usefull
neck wall thicknesses that can be utilized.


With regards,
.357Mag
I will say the the WSSM series of cases have oft been faulted for TOO Thick necks. That might give some idea of sensible upper limit for neck thickness.
 
I don't know why anyone would turn AFTER fireforming.
Turning up onto the shoulder before upsizing/fireforming can prevent doughnuts. Otherwise you'll have to inside ream to address this. And once fireformed, thickness variance is left inside, instead of outside(to be cut away). So you would have to fully neck size FF'd brass, then re-expand, to get variance back outward..
It also doesn't make any difference if the necks are perfectly concentric for turning. You probably aren't holding the brass or the turner concentric during the operation, and I've turned mighty wobbly new brass perfectly.
Just turn it when it fits the mandrel well, which is usually as expanded straight out of the box.
 
I neck turn everything I load for, regardless of whether the rifle has a factory or tight neck chamber. I always neck turn before fire-forming. In fact, off the top of my head I can't think of a situation where it would be better to turn after fire-form (though I'm sure there is one out there). If you are going to neck turn after firing, you will have to make sure that you size every bit of the neck, then you'll need to expand them after sizing so they'll fit on the mandrel. That all seems like a lot of extra work when you could just neck turn as part of your initial prep work and be done with it.

Pat
 
Okay. My logic is unclear then. I have not made a wildcat before.

I thought that I would place the brass into the tight neck chamber, and the brass would be neck sized to fit the chamber, but not using a seated bullet. Just using fast powder and bees wax. After I blew the shoulder out, I thought I would expand the neck, then neck turn, then use a bushing neck die. So the neck turning would be done after the fireform. So this would actually cause the doughnut if I did this, that makes sense. I can also see where that would be wrong, because the second loaded round would be under different case conditions than the first round, since it would still form more after the turning. I thought that some people had come across as doing it this way. Maybe I just read them wrong.
 
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If your 30AR is already in...................

a factory rifle, that chamber does not have a tight neck. If it WERE a tight-necked chamber, factory brass would not fit. If you are going to have a boltgun built for that case, you'd have to get an old 30 barrel and have its chamber cut off, then fitted and re-chambered as a fireforming barrel only, then, after fire-forming, do your neck turning so it will now fit your tight-necked chamber.

I hope that I have explained this sufficiently for you to grasp, not that I'm an accomplished competitor, but I know when I was trying to turn necks for the first few times, it was all Greek to me and I messed up some great brass due to my ignorance. :D If you can find a mentor, especially one who will sit with you MORE than once, it will get progressively easier, and you won't ruin as many cases. ;)

On that note, It IS helpful if you get some scrap cases for the caliber (bullet diameter) you will be working with, to practice on. If you're going to turn the 30AR, you can perfect your technique turning the necks on .308s or '06s just as well, and if you flub a couple of them while learning, there's no harm done. HTH
 
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I am having a new reamer made for a tight-neck.

So I will turn them down, then fireform in my tight chamber instead. OK, gotcha.

I wish I could find a mentor. My problem is I don't get out much to meet people. I walk out the door to my 500 yard range in the front yard. So I pretty much work alone, and dig out what I can from the internet. I need to get out more.
 
I know what you mean......................

when I started asking questions, back in the day, so to speak, guys were wondering why rounds they loaded "...last year..." didn't shoot as well this year. 'Course they didn't clean cases, and they lubed the inside of the necks w/RCBS case lube; and when I told them that might be a consideration, and they looked at me like I was speaking Venusian, I realized I needed to broaden my horizons. ;)

The flipside is, that there are many accomplished people here, who may believe that others are more up to speed than they really are. What happens then is, they have a movie playing in their heads (just like using the same route to go to work everyday, its EASY, right?? :D) but the trick is, to create, through WORDS, that same movie again, but playing in YOUR head. That's the secret, while not making someone think you're talking down to them. I have to watch myself too, because sometimes I have made a remark I meant as humorous, then read it over a couple days later, and it came back to me as something totally different.

Once you get it down, it'll all seem like child's play......in a couple years :D .
 
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Grouper,

With PPC I like to run the brass thru a body die after necking up (giving me the sharper shoulder angle you mentioned), then run the neck over the expander again, neck turn and load for first fire form (first firing usually formed pretty well after this method). I don't know if that's the old fashioned way to form PPC, but I don't have a dedicated fire form barrel so that's just how I do it. All the other cartridges I've loaded and shot (including various wildcats) I've just expanded/necked up or formed/necked down, neck turned, loaded, than shot.

I'm curious though, are you using a fire form barrel, 22 cal bullets or some sort of plug to fire form before neck turning for your tight neck PPC? Are you also neck reaming?

I am intrigued to know what the predominant neck turning/fire form method is for PPC today. Somebody ought to conduct a poll. It would be worth reading.

Pat
 
I fireform with Bullseye and a wax plug. I turn my brass after fireforming. I don't have a donut and my brass is longer after the first fireforming. I think your expander pushes the neck back some and I think they are crooked also. I did it your way for 20yrs, but not anymore. I do have a fireforming barrel for the PPC and the 30BR. You don't need an extra reamer for your fireforming barrel. I do also have an extra 30BR reamer with a 337 no turn neck. I use it also to make a real pleasant rifle for young people to hunt with.
Butch
 
Butch Lambert said:
I fireform with Bullseye and a wax plug. I turn my brass after fireforming. I don't have a donut and my brass is longer after the first fireforming. I think your expander pushes the neck back some and I think they are crooked also. I did it your way for 20yrs, but not anymore. I do have a fireforming barrel for the PPC and the 30BR. You don't need an extra reamer for your fireforming barrel. I do also have an extra 30BR reamer with a 337 no turn neck. I use it also to make a real pleasant rifle for young people to hunt with.
Butch
Click to expand...

Butch,

This is what I am curious about since you are doing it. I am wondering what you do with the new brass that is unturned in order to fireform it. Does the brass fit the chamber new, or do you have to do something like use a neck bushing to size the brass so that it fits the chamber the first time?

I guess the problem is that fireforming first will put the brass variances to the interior of the neck, which is a bad thing. But then again using an expander doesn't guarantee the neck is perfectly straight when you go to turn, like you are saying.

Pardon my inexperience, but when thinking about the problem at hand, it almost seems like the best way to do it would be to fireform the brass, then turn the inside of the neck. That way you end up with a perfectly formed exterior, and the interior variances are then shaved off, also preventing a donut. Though, there is probably more to it than that, which I am most likely overlooking. Right? :eek:
 
I have reamers to inside ream also. With the PPC remember you are fireforming a 22 cal brass in a 6mm chamber. After you hit it the first time the neck opens leaving very little to expand. Reaming follows the hole and makes the ID nice, but does nothing to uniform the neck thickness. Say a Lapua 220 Russian brass with say a .012 wall thickness is fireformed in a 262 neck chamber you will end up with brass that has a .238 ID on your neck. Not much to expand. Same for the BR.
Butch
 
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