Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Full Length vs Neck Sizing

I never paid any attention to how straight my rifle handloads were until about a year ago.
After reading posts on here and other researching, maybe a couple PM’s to JB too.
I went ahead and bought a Redding slant gauge. The only bottleneck rifles I load for now are a couple 223’s, couple 308’s, a 30-06, and a 338 win. And the only dies I had for them were RCBS and Hornady. After I received the concentricity gauge I started checking my loaded ammo. Let’s just say I was very surprised at how crooked some of it was, and I checked 100’s and 100’s of them. Some I wound up pulling.
So then I ordered all new Forster FL sizing and seating dies. (I really didn’t want to get into the bushing dies). The new Forster helped loading straight ammo tremendously. But some were still not to my liking. And that I blame on the brass I use, Winchester, Remington, and some Hornady.
I wound up making a tool to straighten the loaded ammo that wasn’t up to par, it worked good for the most part. Any ammo that doesn’t load straight I know is because of the varied brass thickness. JB recommend the RCBS concentricity gauge because it’ll check neck thickness too, but I didn’t listen. I do like the Redding slant gauge though, simple tool. And I have since bought a ball mic, any brass that doesn’t load straight it definitely caused by uneven brass thickness.
Now after reading this thread I went ahead and ordered sets of Lee collet dies. I’ll see how they work on uneven brass. If I had it to do over again I’d probably just buy nothing but Lapua brass. And who knows those RCBS and Hornady dies may have loaded straight ammo with Lapua brass.