Neck sizing and shooting

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swampratt

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I need non wet weather and I will head to the range with my homemade portable press.
My experiment is to load at the range and neck size as many times as I can and check for group size.

I want at least 20 reloads before I head home for the first trip.

I want to see if my .308 will chamber easy enough with only neck sizing and I want to check brass length before and after
the shooting session.
I was thinking 168 A-Max or possibly 168TMK 4064 or Varget or military surplus pull down 4895 with a note to use IMR 4064 load data
Or I can use AA2495.
Lapua or R-P cases or another case.

I will accept suggestions on bullet and powder if someone chimes in and is curious.

I thought I could anneal for the first 5 or so rounds then No annealing and see if things change and then go back to annealing.

This will be 100 yards and I wish to do it at Lexington Gun range--- WMA range that is.
Pretty stable benches there.

Anyone here will be welcome to join me.
Or if you have a place and want to participate I am for that.

Eventually I want to fire this chosen case until it fails and Neck size each time.
I have done this with full length sizing and it took some time.
R-P case won the battle there with 54 reloads or was it 53.. Took some time to do that.

Whatever powder I choose I need to find an accurate load for my gun with it before starting the test.
I have Varget and 4064 accurate loads now.
But not this surplus powder or AA2495.
 

Dumpstick

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I'm interested in the results.

I have fired a Finn M39 (7.62x54r) many times neck sizing only. IIRC, I have gone 15+ firings.
I did anneal every 3rd firing.
I had no problems closing the bolt, no problems with case stretching. The only reason I quit using that batch of brass was because of problems with the primer pockets loosening.

That batch of brass was used when I got hold of it, so there's no way to tell how many times it was actually fired.
 

osupoke

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I'm interested in the results as well. I very much like the idea of neck sizing, and tried it for a while with my .308. Then one day while deer hunting, I had trouble chambering a round. Checked the rest of the box, and several were extremely difficult to chamber.

I don't know how many times they had been fired or what I may have been doing wrong. Then I read somewhere that you should still FL size every so often, and I've never been good at tracking how many times brass has been fired so I went back to all FL sizing.
 

Kev1Doggy

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I have been neck size only with Lee Collet Die on my .308 Savage and than rebarelled it to 6.5 CM shooting Lapau brass and have had no problems with chambering rounds! I have never annealed my brass either in 40 yrs.
 

retrieverman

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I’m in as far as following this project, but I guess I’m missing the overall point of it. I full length size every cartridge I load for and always have.

For a 308 load, I use Varget, 165 gr Corelokt bullets, and Lapua brass, and it’s worked well in every 308 I’ve tried it in.
 

swampratt

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I guess I’m missing the overall point of it

The only point of it was to see if accuracy was good and I wanted to test a case to failure with neck sizing only.
Or give up trying.

I have read many posts on forums like it worked fine and decent groups.

I like numbers.
I want to see targets shot and group size not that it matters as all guns will shoot different.
I will load this case 31 times for starters and see what the group size is.

I am just going to pull 2 loads out of the air for now with some powder I do not really want. AA2495 and 41.5 gr and 42.5 gr.
I have sierra tipped match kings in 168 gr that I do not use.
Getting rid of unwanted components in a fun way.

Pulling a load out of the air without testing will not show any accuracy so maybe this is just more a brass fail test.
And a reason to get out
 

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