Neck Turning-What wall thickness

[vancewalker007]

What is the optimal neck wall thickness when turning necks on brass and if turning necks does that limit the amount of reloads you can get out a case?

What my father and I have noticed is below 0.012-0.013 you can loose the necks on firing. They just evaporate. We usually try to stay around 0.013-0.014.

 

[orkan]

The correct answer is cartridge dependent. At least partially chamber dependent as well.

Pretty hard to turn to .013 if a case starts out at .013, which many of the smaller cases do. Even harder to turn a .013 to .015. lol


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[david g ranes]

What my father and I have noticed is below 0.012-0.013 you can loose the necks on firing. They just evaporate. We usually try to stay around 0.013-0.014.

I have a 6mm Remington put together by hart I have shot it for years long before of hearing of neck turning. You would have to turn necks awful thin to get enough expansion to let a bullet drop in. I wouldn't even found it out but I bought 7x57 brass and made 6 Remington out of it. The necks were so thick I had to turn it I made it the same as my factory brass 11 or 12 thou the gun shoots great but a bullet definitely would be able to be seated without sizing. My measurements show I have .001 clearance between brass neck and chamber neck.

 

[QuietTexan]

Any advantages on turning necks for a hunting load? Rarely if shoot past 450 yards. Thanks

Making the assumptions that by hunting load you mean hunting of ungulates and not varmints so:

1. Caliber is in the 6mm to 9mm range with heavily constructed bullets
2. Acceptable accuracy is in the 1-1.5 MOA range (~6" kill zone at 450 yards)
3. There is sufficient neck clearance between the brass you have and your chamber

- then based on my personal experience no, there's no benefit. If the brass you're using is so sub-par that neck turning would accomplish anything the rest of the case is likely just as bad in terms of thickness variations as the necks and your load tuning would be difficult to impossible unless (IMO) you do way too much brass prep and sorting. The easy button at that point is to just buy better brass to start with.

The root question of why are you turning in the first place is important - wringing out the last bit of precision vs dealing with a tight chamber vs dealing with bad brass - that third reason will fall apart as garbage-in-garbage-out no matter how good your loading skills are.

 

[haisardao]

Thanks, that makes sense. I handload for hunting, deer and other ungulates. I don't currently turn necks, I try to buy good brass, and most of the time I'm shooting 0.75 MOA-1 MOA. I shoot 280 Remington and various 30 calibers. I was just wondering if it was worth embarking in one more thing to improve my hand loads.
Thanks again,
H

 

[vancewalker007]

Thanks, that makes sense. I handload for hunting, deer and other ungulates. I don't currently turn necks, I try to buy good brass, and most of the time I'm shooting 0.75 MOA-1 MOA. I shoot 280 Remington and various 30 calibers. I was just wondering if it was worth embarking in one more thing to improve my hand loads.
Thanks again,
H

For what you're doing I'd just buy good brass. Turning necks adds a lot of prep time.

 

[Mike Matteson]

I have turned neck for 22+yrs now. Most were standard chambers. During that time I found lots of necks really off. I turn all my necks. With the one rifle it looks like it going to be .0125th. Prefer .013th. I learned a long time ago to anneal the cases. It stop the neck splitting. Never know when you might have to push that distance some. I want to cut my inconsistency down to as little as possible. What other people is fine by me. In 500yds and your loads are grouping in the 3" range, which I have and didn't cut necks at that time. 12 to 13 thou is what where you want to be.

 

[Wachsmann]

So good subject. I just bought a neck turner tool. I have about 8 to 9 firings on some brass and have been annealing each time from the start. My neck tension was getting a bit tighter during resizing and I started measuring my neck walk thickness. I was up to 17 tho on a 308 win case. I now have about 15 cases turned back to 14.5 to 14 which is what I measured on some brand new brass. I thought this might be a good place to keep them around but sounds like I can go to 13 next time. Only thing now after just doing those I'm thinking I want a more or easier way so I'm looking at the RCBS attachment that you can adapt to you trimmer. Also looking at the 3 in one trimmer as well. Looks like it would save me a lot of time. This is a hunting rifle but I like to shoot long range with it as well as long range hunting. I try my best to make all my hunting loads worthy of 1000yrd steal bangers or 1MOA or better worthy at 1000yrds so they need to really be like 1/2 MOA cause when you factor everything else in your 1/2 MOA load seem to be about like a 1 MOA by the time you get out there with all the different environmental's.