I wouldn't say that "neck sizing doesn't work". In fact, it works just fine... for about 4-6 firings on your brass. Then you'll start to feel a little click when open the bolt. A couple more firings and that click will take a little more pressure to overcome and that's when you start to think about FL sizing or even annealing to "save your brass".
A few years ago I was writing a magazine article discussing the latest annealer. Being a skeptic data analyst. I dove off into the study of cartridge brass metallurgy to test some of the claims that sounded more like hype than science... got a real education in the huge variety of phase changes that brass responds too. Relative to this discussion, when case pressure builds during firing the brass completely expands to the chamber dimension, then shrinks only slightly once the bullet has left, allowing for extraction. If you keep that range of expansion/contraction within about a .001-.002" range cartridge brass alloy can repeat this movement almost indefinitely without any metallurgic change because brass does not work-harden in the same fashion that steel or aluminum does.
Run it through a FL die, keeping the dimensional grow/shrink in the proper range and the cases will reset back to a consistent size all the time. But keep hammering them at the max dimension (neck-size only) and they will harden at that max dimension and lose the shrink factor -- usually leading to difficult case extraction in less than 10 firings. As a side note, when I was testing this, I found that the typical case annealing processes would only bring back the hardened brass for one or two before it was click-y again. Conversely there was no perceived benefit to annealing brass that was always FL resized. The benefit of always FL resizing to that nominal 1.5-2 thou movement is to maintain the full range of growth/shrink ability in the case material.
I'm not a competitive shooter and I own several hundred cartridge cases for all the rifles I own.
I'm a hunter that also likes to shoot at the range and achieving maximum accuracy without having to become a cartridge engineer and succumbing to chasing all the minutia that I could get lost in has been my goal.
I started neck sizing my brass with the Lee Collet die and after 5-6 firings, rather than going through annealing, shoulder bumping, full length sizing and fireforming brass again I simply recycled the brass as scrap.
So doing the math, if I have say 300 cases for a particular rifle, and each case only lasts 5 firings with neck sizing only then I can fire that particular bunch of brass a total of 1500 times before I need new brass. What's the problem here? I see a lot of solutions without problems in this discussion. Hunters rarely if ever fire a rifle that many times.
I get it that F Class shooters and true actual competitors may need to eek out as many firings as possible for each case they have carefully crafted but really guys and gals? This is a hunting forum and since it seems that many of us admit that best, or nearly so, accuracy is achieved by neck sizing only then why chase the time consuming rituals that competitive shooters feel they need to do?
In summary, my solution has been over the last 20 years, has been to neck only size my brass for almost all of my cartridges and to use good quality brass in the first place and toss the brass that starts to need more than neck sizing.
By the way 223 and 308 and several of my other non-magnum cartridges can go more than 5 firings and the brass is very cheap for most of them anyway so no issues there.
I have seen so many hunting forums become dominated by people that are either competitive shooters or competition wannabes and a lot of hunters end up thinking that they need to follow their lead or they can't achieve great accuracy. Meanwhile the guys that have been handloading for a long time (over 50 years for me) just keep reading all this rhetoric about all the stuff that is supposedly necessary to achieve accuracy and shaking our heads as we consistently shoot bug hole groups with minimal case prep and bother.
I imagine I'll get a lot of flak for this post, but I've been around several forums, including this one, since their inception and have seen this same discussion repeated many many times and the newbies get frustrated by all the stuff they read that they need to do and end up just giving up or shooting strictly factory ammo.
It ain't rocket science. More power to the people that enjoy the minutia that comes with intricate brass prep. I just never found it necessary and anyone that wants to bring a couple of rifles here to Tallahassee and pay the $10 guest fee to my range and shoot with me will quickly either walk away in denial or become a believer. It just ain't so people.
