Home Forums Reloading Varmint Rifles 20 Practical Reloading

What dies and process are you using for making .20 Practical? Recently picked one up and want to make some more loads than what it came with.
Thank you for the help.

223 Redding FL Bushing die with the appropriate bushing and 20 cal decapping rod.
Same for seater just change out to 20 cal seater, I use a 20 cal micro top.

I have a .204 Ruger collet die set that I use. I also use a Lee .223 full length sizing die from another set. Starting with .223 brass I size it through the .223 full length die with the expander removed, that'll make it small enough to go through the .204 Ruger collet die. I ground a bit off the bottom of the collet die so it'll size the full neck, I just did it by eye on a bench grinder. I didn't know if it'd work but it worked fine. The .204 Ruger seater works fine with no modification.

I have two .20 practicals. In one I shoot the 39 gr Sierra blitzking and the other the 40 gr Hornady Vmax. I use 27.0 grs AA2520 in both of them in front of a CCI 450 primer. Lake City .223 brass. Both shoot tiny groups.

Redding 223 FL Bushing die withe expander, spindle and bushing changed out to 204 Ruger inerds. Hornady 204 seater with the sliding sleeve. For range brass I run it thru a RCBS 223 small base die first.

pretty simple & practical

Redding 223 FL bushing die w/.227 & .228" bushings

Forster std BR seater in 204R (or 223 Rem)

204R collet neck die...or Redding 223 bushing neck die

Many ways to accomplish the same thing

Built my first 20 Practical in 2007

I have multiple 223 die sets... and a 204 Die Set...

only thing I bought just for this round was a Hornady Universal 20 Caliber neck sizing die... $20.00

223 seater die works just fine to seat bullets.

223 die with spindle taken out...

223 body die..

204 die to use to start sizing the neck down a hair, and finish with the Universal 20 cal Neck sizer from Hornady. once necked down to 20 cal, you never need to use it again.

Thank you for the responses.
I will buy some bushings and start making brass if the rifle will shoot.
Bought it off a member here that had the work done from what appeared to be a reputable smith in Oklahoma. The seller sent targets shot with the gun and I am sure to his knowledge was good to go. I found different upon inspection.

I got around to putting a bore scope through it just recently and it looks like a plumber did the chambering not a gunsmith/gun builder. A little disappointed but I still have the action, stock and other components to make it a wash on the deal. I may cut some threads off the chamber, re-thread and re-chamber or just lose some length (go from 26” to 24” and re-chamber). There is zero free bore and the lands are not even close to being even. All that said I may re-chamber to a Vartarg if I don’t do a Practical.

If you go the Vartarg route I'd source brass and dies first, also make sure if you do the vartarg the reamer matches the brass you wanna use.

Thanks Sherm.
All great things to consider, I will probably stick to the 20 Practical just for the reason in the name; Practical.
My gun builder has a couple Vartargs himself and made a few for guys your direction. He makes a lot of brass and thinks very highly of the cartridge, he and I have friendly competitions with his Vartarg and my 221 Fireball he built.
Sometimes he even has to buy beers afterwards.

For what it's worth, I needed to run a small base sizing die. Added a step in the process as I form the 223 down

mine was made with a real tight chamber.... so I do that step also.... makes life a lot simpler...

gonna be loading up some of those this morning actually...until the ground fog clears at least...