I am a firm believer in setting the shoulder back .002. As far as the neck goes, I hate to run the expander through the case, as I have felt and seen my concentricity go down the tubes in many cases. That being said, I had a few Hornady neck sizing dies many years back and didn’t feel that that did much for concentricity, despite that my reason for buying them was to improve that problem. I believe the problem was caused by trying to size the necks down as much as .007-.010 that were shot from rifles where the chamber had a large neck.
12-15 years ago, I sold all my dies and replaced them with Redding bushing dies. Upon getting them, I started turning all my necks as I also had a few rifles made with tight neck chambers. I now set the shoulders back .002 with a FL die after removing the expander and stem. Depriming is done with a Lee decapping die first. Then I use the neck size die with the proper bushing to give me .002 neck tension. If the neck has to be sized down more than .005, in a factory rifle or a custom without a tight neck, then I will size the neck down in 2 steps with 2 separate bushings. This allows for my concentricity to end up anywhere from .001-.004, with most ending up at .002.
Sorry to babble on, but I am a firm believer of getting the best concentricity as possible, hence less flyers and improvement in accuracy. As far as the OP’s question, My suggestion would be to set up the FL die with the expander in it to set the shoulder back .002. At least that way the die has a good grip on the case getting better concentricity than using a neck die wher the case is not held tightly giving the possibility fot the neck to loose straightness. I would suggest setting the shoulder back that small amount. It won’t take life away from the case anf it will assure that all cases will chamber. Eventually due to case hardening after ? firings, chambering could be a problem in a case. Not worth it when that buck of a lifetime only gives you a moment to shoot. I think annealing after 2 or 3 firings would be a wiser investment of your time and money instead of neck sizing, unless you run the whole gammut ad I descibed that I do in the aforemention paragraphs. Just my 2 cents.
Last edited by 89tenbus; 03/20/19.
