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Mule Deer and others with experience sorting for neck thickness...

I have a new-to-me rifle in a wildcat chambering. I'm going to neck down 300 Win Mag brass to 7 mm Mashburn with a trim and form die, trim to length, then fire form. Then anneal, resize, load, fire. If I got any of that wrong, let me know, as I haven't actually done it yet.

Here's the question...should I sort the brass for neck thickness concentricity before sizing down, or after the fire firm process is complete? Or does it really not matter when it happens?

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Case necks are going to get thicker when you downsize them. And certain brands of brass seem to have a reputation for thicker neck walls. Winchester is probably the thinnest. Depending upon how tight your chamber is cut necks could be a little on the thick side and give you a problem with proper bullet release on ignition so watch out for that. If you haven't ever played with a neck Turner now might be the time to get one.... you can true up those necks after downsizing. The reward should be better concentricity after sizing and more accuracy.... and you should only have to do it once!

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I would sort a few and neck them down, then seat bullets and see if they chamber with no problems.

Part of the deal with wildcats is there's no standardized neck clearance in the chamber, as there is with factory rounds. Yeah, there are the original Mashburn dimensions, but not every wildcat reamer is made the same way.

When necking down brass for factory chambers, say .308 brass to 7mm-08, it's easy to check neck clearance by seating a bullet in a neck-sized .308 case, then measuring the diameter of the case's neck. If it's smaller than .315" then you're good to go--unless, of course, the neck thickness in your batch of .308's varies widely. But it usually doesn't, and the diameter of chamber necks in factory rifles usually isn't undersized, either.

But the only way to check a wildcat chamber is try it and see if there's any difficulty in chambering resized brass WITH a bullet seated. And if there is, then you have to figure out where the difficulty is coming from.

Once you test all that, then I would go ahead and sort case necks in the .300 brass before resizing. I can't recall seeing any necks change drastically in thickness on one side and not the other when being sized down, and if sorted beforehand you should be good to go without having to turn necks--something I avoid anymore except on my 6mm PPC bench rifle, which has to have necks turned for the cases to fit the tight-necked chamber.


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If you are going to neck turn I would sort first just to avoid all the work on the culls. JB pointed out if the necks are way off the rest of the case usually is too.

I wait till after fire forming before trimming as the cases shorten in the process when blowing the shoulder out. Then after trim and size check the neck variations.

I am going to trim necks just to establish baseline accuracy on a new rifle but after that the neck trimmer will stay in the box for a good long time.


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If I bother to measure neck thickness I sort and keep the cases necks that are not the same thickness.

I usually do this for shooting competively.

I used to do things such as this a lot more than I do now.


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When you are pushing the neck back it is a good idea to check for thickness or donuts at the neck shoulder juncture.

Reducing the neck from 30 to 284 shouldn't cause excessive thickening but moving the shoulder back can. A more severe example would be making 7x57mm or 250 brass out of 30-06 or WSM brass from 404 Jeffrey cases this can easily create thick necks or donuts.

The only batch of brass I have encountered that really needed neck turning was some early 270WSM brass. It looked like it was formed from Ultra mag brass. Fired cases were almost the same size as un-fired, not good especially when flirting with 65,000 psi.


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Thanks all for your inputs!

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Expanding on Tehano's post; a lot depends upon whether you are pushing the shoulder back and the cases you are reforming from.
I form 219 Donaldson Wasp from 30-30. The 30-30 case walls become the Wasp necks. This is an extreme reforming. It's a given I will have to turn the necks before I fireform the case. In 20 years I've yet to run into a "donut" at the base of the neck with Winchester or Nosler brass as others have, but I bought a reamer bit for my Forster trimmer just in case.

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The donut can also usually be removed by turning the case neck a little way down into the shoulder. Then you don't need two tools....


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Joel, I would try reforming them and loading them. I'd bet money, since our rifles were chambered with the same reamer you won't have any trouble. I have been using Hornady brass in mine mostly, with a little Remington and haven't had any problems at all.



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Thanks Scotty! I'm just going to make sure there aren't any brass pieces that have thicker necks on one side vs the other. Supposedly a neck that has a lot of variance in thickness from one side to another indicates the entire brass piece is thicker on one side throughout the case body. I commonly cull brass this way for my 30-06s.

Now if the question is whether said brass piece can fire a bullet to kill an elk at 300 yards...that's another question!

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Originally Posted by Bugger
If I bother to measure neck thickness I sort and keep the cases necks that are not the same thickness.

I usually do this for shooting competively.

I used to do things such as this a lot more than I do now.


Why do you want the ones that vary?

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Originally Posted by joelkdouglas
Thanks Scotty! I'm just going to make sure there aren't any brass pieces that have thicker necks on one side vs the other. Supposedly a neck that has a lot of variance in thickness from one side to another indicates the entire brass piece is thicker on one side throughout the case body. I commonly cull brass this way for my 30-06s.

Now if the question is whether said brass piece can fire a bullet to kill an elk at 300 yards...that's another question!


I think you'll be good buddy. I do wanna acquire some RWS cases. From all I hear and have seen those might be the heat for 7mm MSM cases.. Then again, I haven't had a ton of trouble from the reformed Hornady cases either.


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