I recently bought a 6.5 Grendel. I bought some Hornady brass for it and a set of Redding series "C" dies. If it helps I use a Forster Co-Ax press. After loading some bullets I checked them on my concentricity gauge. With new brass less than 10 of the 50 loaded were further than .003 out. After shooting them I resized all and loaded 10 more with a different primer. All ten were well out of alinement. I then checked the unloaded case necks and found them to be well out too. I happened to be reading Mule Deer's book ... Gack II and remembered he said to take the depriming pin out to have straighter cases. I re-ran the cases through the die and they came out .001. Then I loaded the bullets. Almost all were again very crooked. I straighten them on my True Tool and they shoot great. My question is why would they go crooked after making sure the cases were straight and then loading the bullets? The die didn't seat them crooked before and no adjustment was made on it.

Might try posting this on the Gun Writer forum and maybe Mule Deer may have an answer.

Thought about that, but figured it should go in the reloading section. He gets here occasionally. If I don't get some action on it soon I'll go there.

Any chance your seating stem is out of alignment or doesn't fit your bullets?

Id also be looking at the seater as the culprit.

After you sized the brass without the expander ball did you take any steps to expand the necks to a proper size for the correct interference fit when seating bullets?

I've dealt with gremlins of that nature since forever, and it never seems to be the same solution twice. Even with premium top quality dies there's room for error to pop up. (I've long suspected that the average reloading press's rams are seldom in perfect alignment with the die holes, not to mention slop in male and female die threads and slop in ram fit.) Nowadays when I want the ultimate in perfectly straight ammo right out of the chute, in selected calibers, I resorted to using straight line L.E.Wilson dies and an arbor press. Oh my god slow, but oh my god straight ammo, as confirmed with my Sinclair concentricity gauge. Besides, what's time to a pig?

Wouldn't that cause the necks to go back crooked? Also, I used the same style and brand of bullets. 100g NBT. They did not seat hard.

The seater wasn't a problem when originally loaded. Also, it wasn't adjusted after the first loading when cartridges were much more straight.

That depends on tools, technique and the brass itself. I rarely ever use the expander ball in FL dies in the conventional matter. If I FL size I push the neck over an expander mandrel in a subsequent operation. When the brass has good necks I rarely see as much as .003" runout in the assembled rounds.

What mathman's talking about is pushing the expander ball through the neck (starting from the outside) in a second step, rather than pulling it through (from the inside) during the first sizing step.

Either way, you do need to expand the necks if using a standard FL die, otherwise the neck inside diameter is usually way too small and that can cause both runout and neck tension issues.

This kind of thing is also why a lot of guys chasing accuracy and low runout like to neck turn their cases; uneven neck thickness can cause runout during both sizing and seating. Adjusting neck wall thickness can also be used to adjust neck tension on the bullet.

Would double seating help in this case?

I recently purchased a Hornady concentricity gage and found that my ammo assembled using RCBS and/or Redding NS/FL dies and Hornady New Dimension seaters with the sliding sleeve were consistantly within .001" - .003" concentric. I no longer check concentricity and with proven loads get MOA accuracy.

Now you guys got me really confused. How does one pull the expander ball through the neck from the inside without first pushing it through from the outside? I hope I am not being too dense.

You size with the expander removed. Then you put it back in the die but screw it down so it expands the neck before the case contacts any other part of the die. Mule Deer wrote about this in (I think) Gun Gack 1. The idea is that the bottom of the case is flat against the shell holder as you raise the ram and it makes more concentric sizing than pulling the expander out when only part of the rim is contacting the shell holder.

If the expander ball is in your sizing die when you first size the case, it doesn't (shouldn't!) have to expand the neck on the way in, only on the way out after the neck is squeezed down in the die.

If you run the case into the die without an expander ball, then push it through in a second step, the neck is already sized small so the expander ball has to expand the neck as it's pushed in.

Ok. Thanks.

If you want to decap during the sizing process, screw an expander from a smaller caliber into your sizing die. For example use a 270 expander stem in your 30-06 die so it pushes out the primers without contacting the case. Saves buying a separate deprime die if you don't want to mess with that.

Never thought of that. I may have to try it.

Variable neck wall thickness most heavily expresses itself after ones slugs have been seated. Turn/ream one's necks and the issue may vanish.

If you want an easy system that works sale your full length die and get a Redding body die and Lee collet necksizer die. The Lee Neck Die is $11 at Natchez and the body die is $37

No more horrific expander ball bullshit to deal with. When a person buys a runnout gauge it becomes immediately apparent that expander ball dies suck!


Trystan

I thought the Redding Body Die and Lee Collet Neck Die worked okay.. But I think I had better concentricity and more consistent neck tension with running custom-honed Forster Full-Length Sizing Die (without expander spindle) and a separate Mandrel Die.

My concentricity gauge showed a typical 0.004-0.005 bullet runout with my body/collet dies (which is actually not bad at all), but I typically get less than half of that or sometimes not even detectable with my custom honed Forster/Mandrel dies. Note that I used my Forster Benchrest Seater (without micrometer) for both setups and I always anneal.

P.S. - For my 308win, I had my Forster sizer neck sized up to 0.334” and I chose a TiN expander die by 21st Century (but I suspect the Sinclair works equally well).

This has worked well for me .

Watched Panhandle Precision - Sam reloading video - knowledgeable guy - he says small amount of runout doesn't affect his loads . He shoots all the ''perfect'' rounds against rounds with 4-5 thousandths runout - no difference in his rifles . So I'm going to follow his advice and ''proof things'' , Sam says he spent money/hours at the bench but couldn't prove that all his efforts did anything to improve groups/ES/SD .

Aside ; Now following -Mark & Sam after work- youtube , his advice to stop the cleaning of barrels is working great for me . Only clean when accuracy drops off then give the barrel ''maintainence'' - wet patch soak a minute - get the carbon out ''some'' of the copper out - not clean to the metal - perfect white patch syndrome . That way - no waiting for the barrel to ''come back'' to grouping .

Frankkk ,

On the topic of micrometer or no micrometer - I'm thinking it might be handy during final load developement during the seating process - start at the lands - back off 10K at a time ?
I don't have any high dollar seaters couple of redding standard die sets all the rest Lee - no inline type seaters <-- just saying .

I haven't used the setup your talking about but have heard very good things from people I trust about how well it works. The only downside I could think of is if a person ever decided to change brass and ended up with brass that had a thinner neck than what you were honed to you'd not be able to make it work whereas with the lee neck die setup you can change brands of brass all day long.



Trystan

Multiple size bushings for differing brass .
Even top brands can very quite a lot from lot to lot .

The secret doing Frankk's way with his honed out sizing die is using a separate expander die..

Definitely agree that honed sizer die setup won’t work with thin brass like Winchester brand or maybe Federal. But it seems to work very well for my Lapua and military brasses. Plus I still have the collet neck die if I ever really need it. Have a good night

That’s a very good point about honed FL dies not working well if you use a lot of different types of brass. I settled to exactly what I want to use but otherwise I would not recommend locking yourself into a specific neck thickness using honed die.

I’ll have to find that “Panhandle Precision” cleaning video. Thank you. I typically do my cleaning after hunting weekends are done and after range sessions. I do swabs and about 20 bronze brush strokes with “Ed’s Red” homemade stuff, and then run patches with odorless mineral spirits until patch comes out clean.

And I totally agree that 4-5 thousandths isn’t bad and I hope I shared that I was getting that with the collet die. But with my old Lee FL Sizing Die with Expander, however, I measured upwards to 8 or 9 thousandths.

Bottom line is the honed Forster FL Sizing Die Body and separate Mandrel Die seems to be working better for me than what I got with the collet.

Thanks Frankk, I'm going to have to give that a try at some point! I was wondering have you by chance tried the..........

"Forster Precision Plus Bushing Bump Neck Die"

I've heard some great reviews about this die as well



Trystan

I haven’t tried the Forster Bushing Bump Neck Die because I typically use the Redding “Competition Shell Holders” to do my bumping. Those multi-thickness shell holders make that task easy with any full-size or body die.

With that said, I’d alway be glad to hear if someone else has good experience with that die.

Thank you
Frank

^ that has worked beautifully for me.

The other thing I’ve done when no Collet Neck Sizer is available is the Hornady caliber-specific Neck sizer w/ the expander backed into the die so Neck is still supported by the die as it exits. I have to decap in a separate step but concentricity remains excellent. I think I got that from MD’s “Gack” also?

OK I tried this method. I only did 20 cases, but still had 10 crooked, but not as much as before and the others were plenty straight.

This is my thought as well. Sort your brass, turn necks or go with the Lee Collet die as it deals better with neck thickness issues than many other systems. The bushing dies are nice but for them to work to there full capacity necks need to be turned or start off uniform from the factory. I don't like doing this so now I get good brass and or cull the bad ones so I don't have to screw around with them. Each time you get one out more than .003 file a mark on it. If it happens again cull them.

MD wrote that even after neck turning the suspect brass usually had thickness variation in the case body and this gets them expanding unevenly when fired and can induce run out later in the reloading process. This is why good brass or culling is the easiest solution for me.

Make sure the brass is not an issue first. If it is you may have to put some work in it making it uniform.

It's for a 6.5 Grendel. The die Redding C die set was the only one I found in that caliber readily available.