Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Canada Here's a test you can do at home

...if you reload. I was prepping 200 of the 1000 cleaned, but otherwise unprocessed, 5.56 brass I bought recently. They are all IVI Cdn military cases that I like to use for my 6x45mms and now, the 223 Wlyde Contender. How much does your die reduce the neck diameter?

Reloaders own calipers and some own more than one set of reloading dies. You can do this measurement and see the differences in your equipment. Caveat: Your calipers probably cannot accurately measure down to 10,000 of an inch, and aren't really made to measure round things, but hey, it's just an informal test, right? Oh, and don't forget to measure the necks before you resize them, okay?

As I was visually inspecting them, something else occurred to me. Over the years I have collected a lot of 223 dies. Besides measuring the neck diameters, why not measure for runout?

It's generally accepted that hunting rifles can handle 2 or 3 thou of runout without sending bullets all over the place. I wondered if my resizing dies caused any. Because it was cold and I didn't feel like going anywhere, I grabbed the 223 die sets and decided to run a small sample test of my brass. Here are the four contenders: A Lee Loader - neck sizes only; A Redding Deluxe Die Set - it has two resizing dies - a FL and neck sizer. It is NOT a bushing die set. It is a traditional 'squeeze the brass to fit' die set. And finally, my hybrid set, It has a body die, Forster seater and a collet die. The total is 4 resizing dies.

Why not measure both the neck diameter after resizing and induced runout?



As I said earlier, the brass is cleaned, but otherwise unprocessed. The 40 cases I picked at random all measured less than 0.002 inches of runout to begin with. They were ejected from a C7 and bagged at the range. In theory, the necks are going to be pretty straight, after being fireformed in the rifle.



Here are the results of my little test. Is a sampling of 10 sufficient to draw a conclusion? Sure. It's my test. I can believe (or not believe) anything I want.

From most to least runout - with outside neck diameters included.

1. The loser - The Redding FL sizing die. It averaged 0.004 runout after sizing. Outside case neck measurement - 0.2475 inches



2. The second worst, but not nearly as bad - Hybrid – Redding Body Die and Lee Collet Die – 0.002 runout after sizing. Outside case neck measurement - 0.246 inches



3. The almost winner, AKA the runner up - Lee Loader – 0.0015 runout after sizing. Outside case neck measurement - 0.244 inches.



4. The 2020 Champion - Redding Neck Resizing Die – 0.001 runout after sizing. Outside case neck measurement - 0.247 inches.



So, for kicks, I will shoot 160 cartridges, 40 reloaded using each of the four die sets. I'll load them with identical powder, bullets, OALs, etc. and see if this preliminary measuring means anything.

But first, I loaded up 200 cartridges (198 actually) to fireform in the chamber. I figure it will take awhile to shoot that many out of a single shot!