Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Ask John Barsness Questions About "Seating Bullets Straightly."

Ol' Joe,

Curiosity DID NOT kill the cat. I tried your suggestion, and it worked "purr"-fectly (however, I only tried 3 cases, so the sample size is extremely). If this will work all the time with all/most other resizing dies, doesn't it make the RCBS Universal decapping die unnecessary (just my musings). No noticable contact between brass and resizing die and the primer popped out with practically no effort. You have made my day.

Mule Deer,
I also checked case-necks using the one-step standard procedure (i.e., Resizing/decapping in one-step, although I did keep the decapping pin/decappin rod loose). Neck run-out for all three cases was no higher than .002 - I thought this was pretty good.

That is quite good, especially if you aren't using brass sorted for uniform neck walls. Keeping the decap rod loose works great for several sets of my dies.

m

BearClan I`m glad my suggestion worked. I would not worry too much about runout though if you are finding it at less then 0.002" while resizing with a loose decapper. It sounds like you have it licked, I`d just continue as you are.;<)

Runout and long vs. short bullets:

I have a question for Mule Deer and others experienced with the effects of runout. I'm kind of new at hand loading and I'm thinking I need to pay more attention to runout. I've noticed that in a few of my rifles, a .270 Win and .270 WSM in particular, I can get 150-grain bullets to shoot good groups, but I'm not having as much success with 130s.

So here's my question: If I'm not controlling runout, will I see a difference in how long vs. short bullets shoot? In other words, if a long-for-caliber bullet and a short-for-caliber bullet are both started out a little off-center (all other things being equal), will the longer bullet tend to "straighten out and fly right" better?

Or do I just have a couple of rifles that like longer bullets?

I have long suspected (but can't prove) that longer bullet do tend to straighten themselves out when they start down the barrel if seated a little crooked.

I have also in general had better luck getting 150-grain bullets to shoot really well in .270's, whether Win. or WSM. This may be because of the above factor, but also may be because the standard rifling twist is slightly better suited to 150's than 130's.

JB

I just finished watching you Advanced Handloading DVD....AGAIN while I was loading a batch of 308.

I measured the runout of the seated bullets after I was done to sort them. 40 of 50 had 0.002 or less RO. The most of the the rest were 0.003 with one as "high" as 0.005.

If I am getting this level of concentricity, is there still likely to be an advantage to measuring and culling brass based on neck thickness?

Maybe, and maybe not. (How's that for certainty?)

What you might do is mark the rounds with more bullet runout, then measure the necks of those cases after shooting them to see if there's any discernible difference in neck uniformity. I often do this by putting a dot on the primer with a marking pen. This also a good way to test if that amount of runout makes any practical difference in accuracy in that rifle.

Hi John,

I just ordered a Sinclair Neck turning kit. After reading what actually comes with the kit, I learned that it comes with an "Expander" die that houses a mandrel to expands the case necks for "optimal bullet tension".

I was wondering if you are familiar with this product? I am assuming this "expander die" is same premise, and uses the two-step process you describe(first resize without expander, then push expander down neck. If you are familiar with this product, what advantages, if any, do you think it would provide over using the normal resizing die's expander?

Thanks

BTW, I don't know if I have been unlucky, but I decided to experiment with neck turning after finding that over half of the 200 Winchester cases I had on hand had neck thicknesses over .0015" (i.e., in excess of the recommendation you give in your "advanced handloading" video for hunting rounds- awesome video by the way).

I plan on neck-turning and "indexing" these cases so that I can line up the thin sides of brass with the locking lugs (a technique that D. Tubbs describes in an older Sierra reloading video) and see how different the accuracy from rounds with higher quality cases (i.e., case neck thickness<.0015;case neck runout<.002). All rounds in test will be made to have bullet runout<.005).

John,
Glad to see you're back with Wolf Publishing and American Rifleman.