Home Forums Reloading Big Game Rifles You need one of these........

Heard about it sometime back. Having issues with some 7x57 reeeloads so I decided to purchase one. How I did without it I'll never know. Straight ammo now. BTW, no matter what I did with the dies the ammunition was crooked. From .008 to .015+ which is no good. Now everything is in the .003 range loaded and ready to go.




http://www.trutool-equipment.com/

Thanks for the post and link. Have had a bit of trouble with a 270. Currently using a block of wood with a few holes in it but it's hit or miss.

just ordered one.

It's a useful tool, but I can tell you from testing that ammo straightened from something really bad like .009" down to .003" will not shoot as well as ammo assembled to .003" from the get go.

Trutools work great.

mathman,

Have you ever quantified at what point you get diminishing returns on straightened ammo? I've always figured that there was an upper limit to how much you could correct "crooked" ammo before you don't see much affect. I was told once that correcting more than 0.004" of run-out or so was a waste of time (say attempting to go from 0.011" to 0.003"). When questioning the poster he was simply repeating what he was told by someone else, IIRC.

I shoot a lot of 308 in some pretty accurate rifles, and I've shot many rounds of Lake City match ammo plinking and testing various ways.

One thing I tried was ammo straightened to a tolerance vs. ammo "naturally" within the same tolerance. I worked with .003" runout. What I found was if it took about .004" or more bending to get within tolerance, those cartridges didn't shoot groups as consistently small as naturally in tolerance ammo.

I use this...

www.hornady.com/store/Ammunition-Concentricity-Tool/

It measures run-out and can be used to remove run-out.

For reloading the 338 it works great. You can check the run-out on the neck of the brass after sizing, Then check the run-out of the finished cartridge and correct. I find that using this technique and adjusting my neck sizing die until case run-out is less than .004, I can consistently get loaded ammo with a run-out of .002 with no adjustment.

If you want to get picky at this point I have been able to get ~15 out of 20 to .000 run-out with the adjustment screw. I was not able to see a difference in group size between the .002 and .000 ammunition, so I quit doing it. There was a huge difference when I first started checking for cartridge concentricity.

The down side to this product is that I cannot use it to measure the necks of my sized 243 brass, so I am only able to guess and check with the finished cartridge. So far the Redding neck sizing die with the carbide button kit has been keeping them straight so it hasn't been an issue. If I start having problems, I will probably get the RCBS tool to measure the necks of my brass as the Hornady product was not designed to do that, it just happens to work.

I prefer the v-block style fixtures for measuring runout.

I would agree that they are probably more accurate, and if I was working on match grade ammo, I would use one of those. I have used the RCBS v-block style and it is great, but the hornady is very easy to use and eliminates the variations caused from inputs from the hand of the user.

I own or have ready access to old and new Sinclair fixtures, but I'm looking for an excuse to get this one:

http://www.21stcenturyshooting.com/Concentricity_Gauge.php

Yeah, that seems to address all the problems I have with the v-block style, as well as add some awesome new features.

mmmmm....must have.....mmmmm

Thanks for posting that. Very nice......

You're welcome. That site has a lot of neat stuff.

Yes it does and was wondering how in the world I'd never run across it. Needless to say it's gonna cost me.

Here's another in the same vein:

http://www.pmatool.com/index.php?osCsid=851ee3a31a7e4fdbcefd421cb9021134

Sweet.

Why must you keep posting this stuff mathman...can't you see I am already broke enough.

Misery loves company baby!

Thanks for the heads up Karnis!
Just ordered, and got, one of these tools. It's surprisingly easy to use, once you get a feel for how much pressure is required to get a little movement on the case neck. I've been having some trouble with getting accurate and consistent loads for my 270 WSM with a new set of dies. With a concentricity gauge, I now know that the stuff I have been loading is .010-.015 out. Can't wait to try the straight stuff out at the range.