Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Neck Sizing vs FL Sizing

Much of this post is the very reason I neck size. It is the quickest and most efficient way to a loaded hunting round that works that I have found for Me. I don't sort brass, bullets, uniform flashholes, primer pockets, hell, I don't even clean primer pockets and I don't tumble brass. I don't lube cases and I don't have to wipe the lube back off

What I do when reloading is..........
Use good brass usually Norma or Lapua and do a visual inspect
I clean the neck shoulder area with 000 steel wool (A good seal is important)
Run a brush 1 pass on the inside of the neck
Run brass through lee neck die
Prime, powder and seat bullet


Last load with a 140 hornady sp produced around 3.5" at 500 yds
The load before that with 147 eld was good for average groups in the 2" range at 500 yds
3 shot groups typical results with many different cartridges and loads.
I do make sure of a few things such as OCW to eliminate verticle string and I load my ammo straight.

Just about as simple a reload procedure as it gets

Its easy to make it complicated.....but its easier if you make it easy 😁


Trystan

And it's working. I wouldn't change a thing.

The reason some people go on about case prep is because they have their own routines. They read magazines that had articles like "Learn the secrets of handloading from top competitors", "Shoot Tiny Groups!" etc. While the techniques discussed certainly did no harm, they didn't really yield much for the amount of time invested.

Years ago, when benchresters were seen doing strange things to their components, some of the hunting crowd copied them. It's perfectly fine, but it's not for everyone. And not absolutely needed.

You're right. Reloading doesn't have to be complicated. On this site though, you have some folks that enjoy fussing with their loads.

Chacun à son goût - each to his own taste.

This, I’m afraid, is bollocks. The problems you get with case life in SMLEs and other Lee-Enfields are associated with the fact that they typically have generously-cut chambers and fairly generous headspace specs. They weren’t designed with reloading in mind after all, but performance under all conditions. People also get themselves caught up in the fact that the later No 4 action was designed to have interchangeable bolt heads in various lengths, wrongly believing that these were needed because these actions “stretch” and so you need a longer one every now and again to take up the headspace. This is not in fact why the bolt heads were designed that way. They were instead to save time in manufacturing: rather than needing to fit up each barrel to get the headspace right, you could simply screw in a mass-produced barrel and then draw from a stack of boltheads to get one which will allow the rifle to pass headspace testing. It also had the side benefit that an armourer, in replacing a barrel in the field, could do the same thing. It really had nothing to do with the action “stretching”, ie undergoing some sort of progressive plastic deformation.

Of course, that is not to say that there isn’t some elastic deformation on firing, but that is a rather different thing. Every action, and chamber, and barrel, undergoes some degree of elastic deformation on firing, due to the pressure in the chamber. In the case of a Lee Enfield you will get some degree of compression of the bolt, and some degree of extension of the action rails, as the backthrust from the case head is exerted on the boltface and transferred to the locking lug surfaces. The thing is though that this compression, which is in the thousands of an inch, is fully recovered when the pressure passes. So too is the elastic strain of the case itself. If the case was to end up too long to fit the chamber after firing either you wouldn’t be able to get the bolt open, because it would still be under compression, or you’d have failure of the action or chamber. In practice however, this is of course not what happens, unless something has gone seriously wrong. The case simply has to fit the chamber after firing.

A good post, and I agree, save that neck sizing wasn't born out of competitive rifle shooting. it has been around since the first reloadable centrefire cases.

I particularly agree with this: "Don't bother doing prep unless you feel it's worth it. Don't think that it is necessary just because a few others are doing it. In other words, don't be shamed or pushed into doing something that you don't see any value in completing" and would add: consider why you are doing each step, and what effect it may have, and don't be afraid to test the stuff you hear or read, because some may be helpful, but some may also be a waste of time, or untrue.

Well, my best explanation of "bumping shoulders" is to bring the headspace nearly back to its "original" distance. If the shoulder on a fired case expands, lets say, .004", your chamber may accept a reloaded case to be bumped back .002" - not the original SAMMI specs. My experience shows that some chambers will not accept a "fire formed" case that hasn't been bumped back. In a field situation you want the round to chamber easily. An exercise I've done is to get a fired headspace number and write it down. Start with a full length sizer so as to only contact about 1/2 of the neck length. Test that cartridge in the chamber. If it needs a little oomph to chamber, I'll screw the sizer down 1/5 turn and
try it again. This will continue until I get easy chambering. Measure it and routinely you will discover you've bumped back the neck to near pre-shot headspace.

Don't forget to test for the fateful head separation with a bent paper clip. Some case configurations need more attention than others, I would say.

Others may explain it differently.

The Lee Enfield has been misunderstood and stories told about it for years. In 40 odd years around small arms, I do not know of a single instance where a bolt head was replaced in the field. Depot level maintenance pers would have replaced them. It would have happened, in Canada at least, as the result of a major inspection.

The bolt head stories started, I believe, when surplus stocks were purchased and shipped to their new civilian owners. Bolts were not kept with the rifle, when in transport. They were shipped in separate containers. When they reached their new civilian owners - a large warehouse or shop - bolts were mismatched, and I've no doubt that the odd rifle had headspace issues. But that was simply because, upon reassembly, no one thought to match them up. They were unaware of the military practice and just started sliding bolts into rifles without checking.



WRT the tricks that competitive shooters employed to gain an advantage over others, those techniques became popular in the hunting world because of magazines. It spawned a whole new accessories industry.

A few gun writers of the day would pen an article about tightening up loads. That was before the Internet, when news traveled slower. In North America, we waited for a monthly magazine for the news. Years ago, it was reasonable for shooters to think that following those procedures would result in vastly improved groups. Of course, few people understood the differences between a factory rifle and a custom made, competition one. And few found much of an improvement using the techniques that competitive shooters routinely employed.

Most likely Mule Deer is monitoring this thread and will soon chime in to set the record straight.

Hooke's Law? Had to look that one up: f=Kx. Elasticity is NOT the same as ductility, YS, WH, etal. I get it. Thanks for clearing it up.

However, the context of my post was with respect to easy (not to be confused with "won't") to chamber/eject full power hand-loads for safe, reliable field use. My assumption being, this is where many of us operate. It's been my experience, operating in this space brass needs to be resized periodically to chamber/extract easily. That said, I don't "hot rod" my loads looking for velocities above well established norms. Quite the opposite, my loads are constructed to work in the field and would be considered slow by many.

Your example assumes/asserts no plastic deformation of the cartridge case wall during the firing process. Is this valid for all brass cartridges operating at max pressures (time and temp too) in the 60-65 kpsi range? Dunno, but doubt it.

If primer pockets stay tight for 10 or so loadings, and the case shoulder gets bumped back periodically, all is good.

My assumption too. FWIW I am primarily a hunter, at least nowadays. While I have done a fair bit of slow-fire competition, most of my competition shooting over recent years has been in competitions where complete reliability of feeding and function of ammunition is paramount, and these include rapid-fire stages and rapid reloads.

The point I’ve made is that if you are having issues with chambering rounds after you’ve reloaded them, look to the cause. It isn’t happening because they somehow got too big to fit in the chamber as a result of firing: unless something has gone very seriously wrong they come out of that chamber not only able to fit right back in but with clearance, due to the recovery of the elastic portion of the strain they've undergone.

I’ve already canvassed the likely causes of them not going back in, and it is up to you whether you accept that or not, but as I said I only neck size, I never “bump shoulders back” and yet my loads chamber easily and reliably, even after the brass has been reloaded repeatedly many times. I wouldn’t do what I do if they didn’t.



Actually that is not what I assumed or asserted. I don’t know whether yours was a deliberate attempt to play the straw man, but I’ll pretend for a moment that it was an accident.

What I said was in fact more or less the opposite. On the first firing of a case typically the case does undergo plastic deformation, unless your chamber is a very close fit to the case. Typically it expands to meet the chamber walls in the area forward of the case web, and while the elastic portion of that strain is recovered the plastic strain is of course permanent. That leaves the case “filled out” if you like, to the shape of the chamber, with a bit of clearance as a result of the recovery of the elastic strain.

If the case is fireformed, and only neck-sized with no other change, then the next time you fire it, the degree of strain it can undergo (ie expansion), in this part of the case forward of the web, other than in the neck, is limited to the same strain as had been recovered elastically the last time the case was fired. That is because it expands elastically, but it then meets the chamber walls, which support it of course and prevent further plastic strain, other than in that part of the neck which had been sized.

Now I did use the word “typically”, and I referred to that part of the case forward of the web, because it is in this thinner section that the significant plastic strain occurs on the first firing, and because it is this part of the case which is relevant to the question of neck sizing vs FL sizing.

While not really relevant to the question of neck sizing vs FL, the web area can also undergo a degree of plastic strain, though typically it is very small, and much less than that typically seen in the area forward of the web on fireforming. A significant degree of plastic strain in the area near the case head area may be indicative of a problem or potential problem: either you are pushing the pressures (or you have brass too soft or thin in the web/head area for the application), which may show up as primer pockets becoming loose; you have a case heading down the road to head separation, which you’ll usually pick up as necking at about the junction between web and case wall; or of course something really bad has happened and you have a failure. If this part of the case is unsupported (as it is in many firearms) expansion due to high pressure and/or soft/thin case head may progress, rendering the case unusable. It is hard to see how this has anything to do with the difference between neck sizing and FL sizing though.

Yes, I think that a lot of what people think they know, and often what people repeat, is based on something they heard or read once. Some of it may of course be true, but some of it may not, or may not be applicable to your own fact situation. Misunderstood, half-remembered stories, or even flat out lies, can become widely circulated as fact. There's any number of things I've heard and read which have turned out not to be true. I remember taking a semester on the philosophy of science, years ago, which went into some detail about this, and the extent to which it pervades all sorts of fields including science itself.

This is true. Often, they repeat what they've read because they want to sound knowledgeable. Some is even made up, on the fly.

Having worked on Lee Enfields as part of my job, I know that headspace was only checked at depot level (third line). First line maintenance had gauges, but they were rarely used. The armourers on 1st line were too busy fixing sights, stocks and quick fixing minor damage. The rest of the time was spent working ranges or performing minor repairs to other firearms.

When I started going to university, I was still working as an other ranks technician and brought that with me. Uni gave me an understanding of why the officers I was working around sounded so foolish. Most were young and could not speak the words, "I don't know." BS flowed out of them like water from the Trevi Fountain. Years later, I would say the only thing worse than the armament officer nosing around was having two of them nosing around.

Are you saying that a piece of brass that is only neck sized will never need the shoulder bumped regardless of the number of firings?...............

Your question is easily answered, take the piece of brass you just extracted and carefully rechamber it.
If it chambers and extracts with little effort you know that your resizing process is the problem.

Lee will also make you a custom neck sizing die to meet your rifle's chamber for a reasonable price. This is helpful if you want to load for a caliber other than their standard sizes.

This whole thread has been useful and informative to me, and among things learned and appreciated, the line above stood out. I've been reloading since 1976, purely for hunting. That's when I first heard of MOA and mostly by dumb luck, developed a ½ MOA load for my 30-06 using neck sizing only. It did not kill big game any better than a nearly 2 inch MOA load I hunted with for one season many years later --- BUT I SHOOT BETTER ON GAME DUE TO CONFIDENCE IN A SUB-MOA LOAD AND RIFLE.

It may not affect anyone else as it does me but there is no question that I shoot significantly better when I KNOW that the rifle will put that bullet exactly where I aim it. It influences my mind more than any one inch variation of group size warrants – but it is real.

So I reload. I do minimal steps, some learned here, with a goal of sub-MOA custom cartridges that feed easy and work without fail in the field.

Call it reloading for the mind.

What happens when you fire a cold piece of brass in a hot chamber. Likewise what happens if your hunting and your chamber is at zero° and you pull a warm round out of your pocket and try to chamber it and headspace is at an absolute minimum. Likewise just because it will chamber I've found accuracy to decrease sometimes rather noticeably when the round has zero room to settle into the chamber. Just because it will chamber doesn't mean setting the shoulder back will not reap benefits.


Trystan

In my experience, and I have some cases that I've fired well over 20 times in bolt guns, if I anneal about every 5 firings, I can get away with using a Lee collet sizer only, and never have to worry about bumping back the shoulder to allow cases to easily go into the chamber upon bolt closing. Before I began to anneal, it was common to have to bump the shoulder back eventually on cases that were fired at high-pressure, like the WSM, or 243, or 270. So I believe that what occurs is that the brass on and near the shoulder gets work-hardened during repeated firings (case stretch under high pressure) and won't "give" under the force of the bolt closing. Annealing the neck and shoulder and a small ways down the case (maybe 20% of the case body) solves this problem. Since I began annealing, I've lost ONE case to head separation, and it was a leftover from the days of bumping the shoulder during sizing. I don't even keep track of the number of firings my cases have now, just a rough estimate of the last anneal per box, and when they start to feel stiff upon neck-size or bullet-seat, I know it is time for annealing again. I rarely find the need to trim anymore either, except on cases with a bit of taper that I lean on pressure-wise, like 223 that I run in the low 60's in bolt guns, and 243 that run up to the mid-60's.

That's what I did for my 6x45mms and 30-303. You just send them a resized case. I believe Hornady started doing that as well, but they will not take an international order. US only. I wanted to try their special order stuff because I like the floating sleeve they use in their seating dies. I think they are concerned with shipping cases through the mail across a border.



Thanks.I wish that I could say it was my idea, but when I taught shooting, confidence building was considered more important than the physical act of pulling the trigger. As an old military instructor told me, "Any jerk can jerk a trigger!" You have to be confident when you pick up a rifle, all the way through. It's along the lines of the Little Engine that Could.

Me too. In a particular .308 where zero headspace opens groups.

0.0015" headspace (shoulder setback) brings this rifle back to a 1/4 minute gun. F-TR rifle.