Once Fired Brass Prep

[aushunter1]

Starting with good brass makes a big difference. To get that level of consistency your going to need to pay attention to neck tension. Thats going to lead to turning necks and using a bushing die to get the exact tension on all your rounds. A hand seating die and an arbour press so you can tell when a bullet seats easier or harder and use for a sighter. A good way of measuring your powder charge. Your going to have to anneal the brass at some point or it all changes. And of course a rifle and a shooter capable of such and a load your rifle likes.

@cajun makes a lot of sense!

@ajkellerusmc what you are talking about is starting to get into BR accuracy which takes more than case prep imo!

There are plenty of articles out there to read if this is where you want to go

You are being redirected...

You have to remember that with trying to squeeze every ounce of accuracy there is so much more that is needed not just basic case prep some of which come with specialised equipment.
Important things-

Annealing
Weight sorting cases
Neck turning
Control neck tension with bushing dies
Be able to measure concentricity of a loaded round

& then you have to be able to dispense powder more accurately than what most dispensers will do with a variance of less than a 10th of a grain.

When all that is said & done then the rifle & shooter then needs to be capable as well.

 

[ajkellerusmc]

No doubt your neck treatment may need an adjustment. Some things in reloading are easy to work around, to me, this is one. But I run bushing dies, makes it simple.

Milo, Do You bump the shoulder at the same time as you run the neck bushing die or do yo do that in a separate step?

 

[ajkellerusmc]

@cajun makes a lot of sense!

@ajkellerusmc what you are talking about is starting to get into BR accuracy which takes more than case prep imo!

There are plenty of articles out there to read if this is where you want to go

You are being redirected...

You have to remember that with trying to squeeze every ounce of accuracy there is so much more that is needed not just basic case prep some of which come with specialised equipment.
Important things-

Annealing
Weight sorting cases
Neck turning
Control neck tension with bushing dies
Be able to measure concentricity of a loaded round

& then you have to be able to dispense powder more accurately than what most dispensers will do with a variance of less than a 10th of a grain.

When all that is said & done then the rifle & shooter then needs to be capable as well.

What I am really working towards is getting my ES and SD down for longer range accuracy not really for bench rest accuracy. Is there much of a difference?

 

[milo-2]

Milo, Do You bump the shoulder at the same time as you run the neck bushing die or do yo do that in a separate step?

One and done, I do it in FL bushing dies. I have been known to add a partial neck size after to some cases, if I do not like the feel, or bad results.

 

[cajun]

The same principles apply. In order to achieve a low es you need a powder and load your rifle likes and properly prepared brass and consistent neck tension. Using quality brass like Lapua small rifle primer in the 308 and 6.5 is a great start. Couple that with a redding full length bushing die a good powder scale and a micrometer seater will get you started. From there you can decide if turning necks is worth the effort. Lapua is pretty consistent.

 

[aushunter1]

What I am really working towards is getting my ES and SD down for longer range accuracy not really for bench rest accuracy. Is there much of a difference?

Very similar, some steps you might say are more important to what you are looking to achieve,
you can get to a certain point with the case weight sorting(and good brass as mentioned!), annealing, neck bushing
sizing(over neck bushing FL sizing but that's my opinion )
I get that, we all like to chase accuracy as much as possible but you can spend a whole lot of coin, spend countless hours of your time plus barrel wear to get to where you might be happy, .25moa is your minimum goal is that correct?

In reality I am more than happy to shoot a LR rifle that shoots guaranteed .5moa every time, if you can actually shoot to .5moa at 1000yrds then you are on your game in every way

The same principles apply. In order to achieve a low es you need a powder and load your rifle likes and properly prepared brass and consistent neck tension. Using quality brass like Lapua small rifle primer in the 308 and 6.5 is a great start. Couple that with a redding full length bushing die a good powder scale and a micrometer seater will get you started. From there you can decide if turning necks is worth the effort. Lapua is pretty consistent.

Don't forget something as easy as a match primer can make a huge difference as well

 

[ajkellerusmc]

I am going to start neck turning and neck tension adjustments. I have pretty much done everything else except annealing. I have all the tooling including the micrometer seating dies and concentricity tool for finished rounds. I had one group that measured .120 in the 6.5 which was pure coincidence as consistent groups are .600 to .750 right now. I would say average ES and SD are currently around 33/14 so with neck turning and tension adjustments I hope to get it down about half of those figures.

thanks

 

[milo-2]

I am going to start neck turning and neck tension adjustments. I have pretty much done everything else except annealing. I have all the tooling including the micrometer seating dies and concentricity tool for finished rounds. I had one group that measured .120 in the 6.5 which was pure coincidence as consistent groups are .600 to .750 right now. I would say average ES and SD are currently around 33/14 so with neck turning and tension adjustments I hope to get it down about half of those figures.

thanks

Let me interject something here, I don't think I do things that much different than most, so hang on. First, you have not posted a pic of your groups, they can tell a story. Just say you have your seat depth nailed on these loads, it may be best to tighten your velocity spreads by adjusting your charge weights. When you remove vertical dispersion from the equation, things are clicking, in your favor.
That is the time to mess with neck treatments, seat depths, etc.. to tighten group size.
Bake the cake before you put frosting on it, if that makes any sense.

 

[dok7mm]

Prior to jumping into turning necks, I would suggest you determine the diameter of the necks in your chambers vs the diameter of a loaded round. If you don't have a reamer print for your chamber or if they are factory rifles, you can measure the neck diameter of brass fired in your chamber & add .001", that will put you pretty close.

When you compare diameter of a loaded round to the estimated neck diameter of your chamber, it will give you an idea of your total clearance. If that number is over .004" - .005" on your unturned brass and then you turn some more off your necks, to even up neck thickness, it may leave you with more neck clearance than is beneficial.

There are a lot of steps, as mentioned by others, to get where you want to go, but it's a heck of a ride. Good Luck!

 

[aushunter1]

Another thing a lot of people are also doing these days(yep another process ) is to not use the expander of the sizing die & then using a specific sized mandrel to expand the neck.
This will aid in concentricity as a lot of stems can missalign the neck as well as giving you choice on how much tension you want.
Could be an advantage with or without neck turning

 

[MattK]

For consistency, I:
(a) clean my cases in a vibrating corn media with a little metal polish for about 1 hour
(b) remove my primers with a decapping die
(c) anneal (after every firing!)
(d) size with a clean FL bushing die (with the expander ball and decapping pin removed, bushing for about .002" neck tension) using Redding imperial sizing wax (which I wipe off after sizing with paper toweling)
(e) clean my primer pockets with an RCBS primer pocket cleaner/electric drill
(f) if necessary, trim to length and chamfer the mouth insider and out
(g) clean my cases in a vibrating corn media with a little metal polish for about 0.5 hour

And I:
(h) turn my necks before first firing
(i) use a 21st century hand priming tool so that the primers are seated to a consistent depth
(j) dip my case necks into imperial dry neck lube (then wipe off lube to the outside of the neck)
(k) dip the lower portion on each projectile into imperial dry neck lube
(l) seat the bullet with a Forster micrometer seating die, preferably one which has been reamed with my chamber reamer

I use good quality brass (Lapua and Peterson) and projectiles (mainly Berger) and I don't weight sort. I recently checked 10 of my Peterson 300 Norma cases and these wasn't 1 grain weight difference between them. But if there were large weight differences in my brass and projectiles, then I probably sort them by weight.

And I measure out my powder with an A&D FZ-300i scale (because it has internal calibration) with AutoTrickler V3.

I think that's about it.

 

[ajkellerusmc]

Prior to jumping into turning necks, I would suggest you determine the diameter of the necks in your chambers vs the diameter of a loaded round. If you don't have a reamer print for your chamber or if they are factory rifles, you can measure the neck diameter of brass fired in your chamber & add .001", that will put you pretty close.

When you compare diameter of a loaded round to the estimated neck diameter of your chamber, it will give you an idea of your total clearance. If that number is over .004" - .005" on your unturned brass and then you turn some more off your necks, to even up neck thickness, it may leave you with more neck clearance than is beneficial.

There are a lot of steps, as mentioned by others, to get where you want to go, but it's a heck of a ride. Good Luck!

For consistency, I:
(a) clean my cases in a vibrating corn media with a little metal polish for about 1 hour
(b) remove my primers with a decapping die
(c) anneal (after every firing!)
(d) size with a clean FL bushing die (with the expander ball and decapping pin removed, bushing for about .002" neck tension) using Redding imperial sizing wax (which I wipe off after sizing with paper toweling)
(e) clean my primer pockets with an RCBS primer pocket cleaner/electric drill
(f) if necessary, trim to length and chamfer the mouth insider and out
(g) clean my cases in a vibrating corn media with a little metal polish for about 0.5 hour

And I:
(h) turn my necks before first firing
(i) use a 21st century hand priming tool so that the primers are seated to a consistent depth
(j) dip my case necks into imperial dry neck lube (then wipe off lube to the outside of the neck)
(k) dip the lower portion on each projectile into imperial dry neck lube
(l) seat the bullet with a Forster micrometer seating die, preferably one which has been reamed with my chamber reamer

I use good quality brass (Lapua and Peterson) and projectiles (mainly Berger) and I don't weight sort. I recently checked 10 of my Peterson 300 Norma cases and these wasn't 1 grain weight difference between them. But if there were large weight differences in my brass and projectiles, then I probably sort them by weight.

And I measure out my powder with an A&D FZ-300i scale (because it has internal calibration) with AutoTrickler V3.

I think that's about it.

MattKSo please clarify that you remove the expander ball/decapping pin and do not need to use it because you are using a bushing die to set the neck tension/diameter?

 

[ajkellerusmc]

Let me interject something here, I don't think I do things that much different than most, so hang on. First, you have not posted a pic of your groups, they can tell a story. Just say you have your seat depth nailed on these loads, it may be best to tighten your velocity spreads by adjusting your charge weights. When you remove vertical dispersion from the equation, things are clicking, in your favor.
That is the time to mess with neck treatments, seat depths, etc.. to tighten group size.
Bake the cake before you put frosting on it, if that makes any sense.

Here are some groups that I fired (some of the better ones) You can see the fly ball on the 6.5 and the 308. The 3 targets for the 308 are from a ocw round robin test. All these were fired at 100yds.

 

[milo-2]

Here are some groups that I fired (some of the better ones) You can see the fly ball on the 6.5 and the 308. The 3 targets for the 308 are from a ocw round robin test. All these were fired at 100yds.

338 load looks good!
If you can find a spot, to test at 3-500 and remove vertical from your grouping, you will thank me. Your numbers will shrink in accordance. I am speaking from experience here, I need to dial away from my point of aim, a couple hits and things blend together, and I find myself wishing bullets into holes. Your sight picture becomes a train wreck.