neck truning of cases

I have read where some people do this up to 4 times per case.t j Jackson had a involved way of doing this to get perfect cases in 6 mm br.
what are your thoughts on this ?how do you go about truning your cases for your rifles ?
gary b
 
neck turning of cases

after expanding the case to 6mm from 220 russian I usually have to turn them 3 times or sometimes 4 times to get
to the proper thickness and uniform mic readings.
 
neck turning of cases

Prepping cases varies by shooter
Here's the basic way i do it'
1 open box and check cases as to weight. sort the heavy ones out from the lighter ones.
2 lube and expand the necks to 6mm.
3 measure the necks with a ball mic.
4 set up cases in holder and do first turn.
Usually about 1 to 1.5 thousands.
5 measure and relube and reset turner for second cut
Repeat as necessary to get to final thickness .
6 square and trim cases to uniform length.
7 square primer pockets with KM tool
8 de burr flash hole with flash hole tool fire form and check weights.
 
I know quite a few serious br shooters including hof members and they all turn their own brass. Lots buy sorted brass from ron though. Its the deal of the century when you think about it. I used to buy a case of brass and sort it into little tackle box type compartments and dig around to find enough of one weight to turn for a match. Now i get a box from ron that has 100 matched ones and im ready to prep
 
I would say. Or is it IMHO. That 50% of Benchrest Shooters, just buy their brass turned.

Funny, of all the shooters know , it is maybe 5%. Most people here do their own. Why would their be so many different neck turners on the market? If everybody was buying pre-turned?
 
I have read where some people do this up to 4 times per case.t

Gary
I think 4 times is a bit excessive, what I do is probably more than necessary, I am making 30 BR cases, I expand on a K&M Expander Mandrel to .30 cal, then make a rough cut with a K&M Turner, followed by one pass with a Pumpkin.
Dick
 
neck turning of cases

Dick it pretty much as a must. with the blue box brass I have , it's pretty thick and getting down to .0085
takes some time. It starts out at well over .013 and if you take too much cut with the km on the electric drill set up you may loose some cases.

It may take another pass to get them almost perfect but it works
Sometimes is just a touch to bring it down a few 1/10000 on the last pass. My chambers are .262 nks.

Everything we do to make thing,s better shows on the paper.
 
I generally take two cuts to get down to whatever I want for neck thickness for a .262 or .263 neck chamber. On the first cut, I use a turning mandrel that has purposely been selected to have a slip on fit with no resistance. I do not force the feed and have no problems. Because of the mandrel to neck fit, I have no heat issues at all. For my final cut, which is around .001, I take a lot more care, the mandrel to neck fit requires just a little effort but little enough that with good lube, low RPMs and a carbide mandrel, I have no heat or brassing issues. My goal is to keep the cutter working all the time, and to let the case align itself with the tool without restraint. If it wants to wobble, I let it. Cutting to the shoulder I intentionally feed the case onto the mandrel too fast to make a clean cut, so that I leave some material to remove on the way back. This keeps the neck pinned to the mandrel all the time. On the way back to the case mouth I use a very slow feed, so that the finish quality is as good as possible, then I squeeze a wad of 0000 around the neck and spin the case faster for a second or so to make the finish more like it will be after firing, so that my measurement will be more accurate. I generally check necks as I go, because I don't do large numbers, and I want to catch problems when they happen. Generally, since switching to carbide mandrels for finish cuts, I have no problems, other than perhaps not having my cutter set for the exact thickness that I want. My necks' thickness are very uniform. Sometimes I have had discussions with shooters about neck turning to tight tolerances and have discovered that they were using a caliper. This is .0001 micrometer work..period. One little tip for those that are expanding .220 Russian cases up to 6mm, the PMA makes a long taper carbide mandrel that is very good for this. If you expand to the point where you feel the resistance climb to a certain point, reverse the ram a bit and repeat, doing this several times until the parallel part of the mandrel is fully in the neck, your necks will be as straight as they were when you started. (runout of about.002) of course a good lube is important to making this work. I use oil applied with a Q tip to the inside of the neck, and to the madrel at the beginning of a session. In my experience, if you expand with a single stroke, with typical mandrels, your cases' concentricity will suffer, and the cuts on their shoulders will be uneven.
 
Dick it pretty much as a must. with the blue box brass I have , it's pretty thick and getting down to .0085
takes some time. It starts out at well over .013 and if you take too much cut with the km on the electric drill set up you may loose some cases.

It may take another pass to get them almost perfect but it works
Sometimes is just a touch to bring it down a few 1/10000 on the last pass. My chambers are .262 nks.

Everything we do to make thing,s better shows on the paper.

Gerry
My mistake I was talking 30 much less brass to turn off

Dick
 
I think y'all are overdoing/overthinking this. The case necks just need to offer some clearance and be about the same thickness so you can use the same bushing for all of them. Yeah, perfect case necks are good to have but that won't make your rifle shoot better. A little different feel when the bullet is seated doesn't matter at all. If you believe it DOES matter then you've got the "Benchrest" disease and can't be helped. :)

Case neck trimmers are not all the same. I traded my Pumpkin for two very nice "almost" new trimmers and wish I hadn't. Both the trimmers have to be used instead of just one cut with the Pumpkin. Somehow, if you try just one cut, one out of three case necks fail (break off). Could be that the brass is 10+ years old and has become brittle but I don't know exactly why....so I'm layin' it on the case trimmer.
 
In 2016, why someone uses a chamber that requires turning darned near .009 off the necks that vary less than .001 is beyond me.

"But that's the way (insert name of Guru) did it" is the hew and cry of the masses.
 
Jackie, as you may remember, the .262 neck was a byproduct of the old SAKO brass, and after that was no longer in use, the old reamers and loading equipment survived for years. In my case, I bought my reamer back in the late '90s and at that time it was designated a Boyer #2 or 3, and I figured that if it was good enough for him, who was I to question his choice.
 
neck turning of cases

I knew that Dick' your the 30 BR guy and a great case too.
I have a sloppy No turn neck on my 30 br 334 ; All i do is clean up the case a .001
Work,s fine for me too. On my set back i'll go to the 330 neck
 
Jackie, as you may remember, the .262 neck was a byproduct of the old SAKO brass, and after that was no longer in use, the old reamers and loading equipment survived for years. In my case, I bought my reamer back in the late '90s and at that time it was designated a Boyer #2 or 3, and I figured that if it was good enough for him, who was I to question his choice.

The "official" story about the 262 neck. Several years ago I bought all of Ferris Pindell s 40 degree shoulder PPC tooling. Gages, seaters, reamers, etc. They all had 266 necks so I ask him why the 262. His response was that at the time of the early development and introduction of the PPC was that the first brass they had it took 262 for the necks to clean up.

Tony shoots a 263 neck mostly.



.
 
I've turned necks every which way, and always hated turning case necks. Just a necessary evil if you are going to shoot benchrest. But the simplest way that I've found that takes just about all the work out of neck turning is to use a Nielson turner with the turner held in the lathe chuck. I wrap a piece of worn out shop roll around the outside of the turner at the front to protect the finish of the turner from the chuck jaws and then chuck it up in a 6 jaw chuck in the lathe. Indicate in the carbide mandrel with the adjust tru features of the chuck. Neck up a box of .220 Russian brass to 6mm using lube in the inside of every neck in a press using a tapered expander that matches the turner mandrel. Then push the cases onto the neck turner turning at 500 rpm in my lathe. I use a Sinclair case holder held in a semi floating fixture to push the cases onto the neck turner mandrel with the tail stock of the lathe. The actual neck turning part in the lathe takes about 30 minutes to do a box of 100. I'm turning for a .010" thick neck to fit in a .265" neck. All done in one pass, the lathe isn't turned off and is spinning from the time I start neck turning until I'm finished with the last piece of brass. It takes about as long to neck them up as it does to turn the necks. In the photo below, the brass part floats in the stainless part to the right on the screen. It pivots at the pin and can move in all directions. This lets the case be started onto the mandrel and have a little bit of float as the case is pushed onto the turner mandrel.

Floating holder.jpg
 
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neck turning of cases

That,s a,nice looking tool mike and looks like it works great

I just make my cases the best way I can , A lathe is a nice tool to have but not
all of the readers have one , although I think it,s getting to be a must if your going to shoot Benchrest
for any length of time. There,s some pretty nice Mini lathes on the market these days.
I bet they would do very good job on cases.
 
I always thought

this game was about having as much CONTROL as one could with as many aspects as possible?????

I actually do not mind turning necks with my K&M....... Slow and steady is my take at it. I turn 25 an evening, no rush. Take as much care as possible to not mess anything up.

Calvin
 
My k&m has been turning necks set to .0087 for 1 cut to .262nk for a long time. No problem. I thought i may have been an oddball not taking extra steps
 
My k&m has been turning necks set to .0087 for 1 cut to .262nk for a long time. No problem. I thought i may have been an oddball not taking extra steps


I'm with you Dusty. I make sure not to tell my brass I am only turning once though. Lots of ways to do things.
 
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