Precision Magazine, May 2010, page 57-59

jackie schmidt

jackie schmidt

New member
Anybody see anything wrong with this method of doing necks??

I thought the main purpose of neck turning was to arrive at necks with zero variation in wall thickness, while achieving a correct loaded round fit for a specific chamber. This method will simply make the neck the correct average wall thickness for the chamber used, but since the reamer will simply follow the existing hole, any existing wall variation will still be present.

Granted, Lapua 220 Russian is pretty darned good in that department, but I have seen them exibit as much as .001 wall thickness variation.

Of course, the Author's results speak for themselves, he has done pretty well with the cases.

But heck, why not just skip all of that, get a .272-273 neck chamber reamer, fire the cases in that chamber, and end up with the same thing......jackie
 
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Jackie,
you mean other than the time involved ,expense of the special lathe,the injection mold for the plastic bullets and the reamer and dedicated fire form barrel ? Naw,looks ok to me.I do like that brainy part where the crystalline structure of brass all lays in one direction and one needs to groom the individual molecules to get a nice hair cut.
Joel
 
German, as much as I would

German Salazar said:
Jackie, I see a lot of people looking for ways to avoid simple outside neck turning and for the life of me, I don't understand why. If you want perfect necks, outside neck turning works perfectly, at a modest cost in time and tooling (or, in your case a lot of tooling!) and it is well proven. It just isn't that hard, but there will always be someone looking for a better way and who knows, we may one day say: "Why didn't I think of that!" (but in this case, I sort of doubt it). In the end, it's a hobby and we all have to find ways to challenge our minds and hands.
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like to think (hope) we are dealing with true thinkers, I must come to the conclusion we are dealing with a bunch of people who don't want to do more thinking than what to eat for dinner. Unfortunately, they want to look on the internet, dial it in and win the Super Shoot or the Nationals. Instant gratification is the ONLY way to go.

What the hell happened to practice, investigation, "putting your time"? when you are trying to get to the top of a PERFECTION game, what makes you think you do not have to practice> Get real.!.!.!.!.
 
In defense of Dan Groleau

At Dan's first SS he had the misfortune of drawing a bench to my left.Somehow Dan kept losing his cart,which was a sinclair type blue plastic deal,just like everybody elses.Our relay would be called to the line and time after time Dan's cart would be missing and he would go off in a panic to find it.Well,something deep inside me found humor in this situation and I could not control my delight.Brad Lewis was to my right and always managed to keep a straight face while Dan was looking in our direction. Dan seeing my enjoyment naturally figured that I was responsible for the missing cart,which made the whole situation even funnier.Now,I swear to God that I never touched his cart. Someone else with the same type of cart must have walked it down the line,opened it up and realized that it wasn't their cart,left it 12 benchs down and went back to get theirs.Any way,to this day,I think Dan dosn't trust me. But in his defense.
Dan has a machine shop and the injection mold stuff at his disposal and I am in no doubt that he has developed the absolute best way to fireform brass. Most of us machine shop challenged guys will undoubtedly continue to FF brass in the conventional method.However it is nice to see the guys with the means pursuing accuracy at any cost. My hat's off to you Dan. Thanks for the input.
Joel
 
Joel

No beef with the way he fireforms brass, I do it the same way, that being I blow the cases out in a 6PPC Chamber, then neck turn.

My beef is there is a flaw in his system. He is not correcting wall thickness variation, which is the main reason for neck turning in the first place.

Just because someone places a big effort into something does not mean that the results will be acceptable. Novice shooters will read this, assume since it was written up in PS that it is credible, not realizing the flaw in the basic concept.......jackie
 
Jackie,

Dan is a good guy, as are his brother Doug and the son Tim. We've shot with them here in Michigan many times. Dan Practices, Has good equipment and has his head on straight at the matches. All of which adds up to him doing rather well at the shoots where I have seen him. That being said, I read the article with an open mind.

I would not do my cases by the method that he wrote about in the article. But that doesn't mean he can't. By all means if that's the way he wants to do it more power to him. There is something to be said of thinking outside the box, just not in this case. I would have liked to see that he had a way to support the outside of the neck, and keep the reamer centered to shave only the center away, but we know that's not as possible or as exacting as Outside neck turning. I don't believe it to be the optimum method or even the correct method, but it's his method.

Should it be published in PS?

Well, Dave Published it! And as he said it's his magazine he'll publish what he wants. More proof (to me) that this is not the magazine or publisher that the IBS needs. There were a few times that I looked back at the cover to see that I wasn't reading the April 1st (fools) Issue though. The fact that it showed up in the first week of May would not surprise me if it had been the April issue either, stranger things have happened. In fact I asked Dad about reading the article... His issue hadn't arrived yet, the postlady was reading it I guess.

Here's another reason I wrote this post... Of our IBS memebership, Daves PS magazine gets like (31 dollars?). And for that we get issues with next to nothing in them Benchrest oriented. Including the 8 pages we are owed! I am not a writer, Heck I had better grades in Spanish in high school than I did in English. But we need guys to submit articles for publishing to PS magazine, Or we will continue to read about Inside Neck Reaming, Lever Actions and Dangerous game rifles.

Recent issues with John Lewis Articles have been intersting. One top shooter has been very vocal as of late on BRC, maybe he has upcomming articles? I'd love to see it. Another problem might be the editing of the articles sent in. A writer gives all he can to an article and it gets hacked to heck by Dave. Makes you think twice before sending in more work. Have we run out of writers that will put up with Brennan? Time will tell.
 
It's a good article that brings up a couple of valid points.

There's a difference in outside neck turning cases that haven't been necked up, and those that have. Cases that have been necked up can benefit from having the neck i.d.s made round and straight before outside turning.

If the neck o.d.'s are perfect after f-forming, inside cutting of the necks:
-makes them perfectly round
-makes the inside neck walls parallel with the outside neck walls
-the cutter establishes the correct neck clearance

Great way to make cases. :) -Al
 
Al

I would bet a paycheck that if a shooter logged on to Benchrest.com and said that reaming the inside of case necks to achieve the proper wall thickness was the same as using a proper neck turning tool to do the OD's, the entire board would point out the basic error in that assumption.

If you put forth the time and effort to get all of your cases ready to go to the line, and the wall thickness still varies as much as .001, would you then say "I think it is a great way to make cases"??

Granted, there are a multitude of shooters out there who are simply "painting by the numbers". They perform task, following a specific set of guidelines, and assume that the results will be satisfactory. I have checked case necks that have been turned by shooters that are worse than they were before all of the "improvements". The reason is that many do not have a clue as to the basic tenants of sound machine shop practice, which turning necks can be classified as.

When "Shootin' Ammo" or some other magazine attempts to delve into the Benchrest World with articles that contain flaws, we look the other way, because everybody knows that they really don't have a clue. But, we should expect more from Precision Shooting.........jackie
 
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If a reamer....

is going to true the case walls, it must be an eccentric type like the ones in the old Lee Target loaders. These reamers would "true"the necks, but you were locked in to a certain thickness. Outside turning is the only way to go...in my opinion. Good shooting...James
 
If I were on the Board of Directors of the IBS I would aggresively persue "Handloader", or "Rifle" magazine about the eight pages we would like to have dedicated to IBS news. We might also bring some new writers to those magazines with IBS membership following.

Paul
 
Years ago, inspired by reading of the experiments in the Houston Warehouse, that mentioned the desirability of lathe boring the inside of case necks so that their CLs would be coaxial with the case bodies prior to neck turning, I talked a die manufacturer into making a neck reaming die, for my .244 necked .222, that cut the inside of the case neck, but left enough neck thickness to allow for outside turning. The reamer left the inside of the neck rough, requiring a couple of firings to smooth out, the uniformity of neck thickness was not as good as after turning, and I could never see any advantage at the target.
 
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Boyd Allen said:
Years ago, inspired by reading of the experiments in the Houston Warehouse, that mentioned the desirability of lathe boring the inside of case necks so that their CLs would be coaxial with the case bodies prior to neck turning, I talked a die manufacturer into making a neck reaming die, for my .244 necked .222, that cut the inside of the case neck, but left enough neck thickness to allow for outside turning. The reamer left the inside of the neck rough, requiring a couple of firings to smooth out, the uniformity of neck thickness was not as good as after turning, and I could never see any advantage at the target.
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Boyd,

You are exactly right. The special die setup I have to make 22ppc -.100 shorts is unique and accurate, however, this is how it works and what I see.

1. You cut/trim .090 off of neck
2. you lube the case and insert into special made die. This pushes the shoulder back the desired amount. The top of the die has a hardened insert that threads into the die body. A precision reamer fits into the insert and reams the inside of the neck.
3. the case is removed from die, shaving cleaned out and then neck turned to final demision. Which is usually about .003 removal.

I have checked cases prior to outside neck turning. They are rough on the inside just like boyd says and the runout is usually around .001-.0015 afterwards. Of course, after outside neck turning...all is well. One thing I did start doing to improve the cases, and it did, was to start necking up the cases after neck reaming to push the inconsistancies to the outside of the neck. This takes a special expander and neck turning mandrel to do so but works very well. I've made close to 1000 cases this way.

Even holding the case in a very straight die with the a precise reamer being guided by a dead center precise threaded insert, case neck runout is still unexceptable, at least to me.

Hovis
 
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While technically correct, they teach in machining-101 that if you drill a hole and then ream the hole with an unsupported reamer the reamer will follow the existing hole. If the location is critical you'll need to single point bore the hole before reaming. Most machinist/toolmakers will considere this as gospel UNLESS they are exposed to an area of industry where holes are drilled and reamed and the location is held to within a few tenths (as in .0001").
 
AJ300MAG said:
While technically correct, they teach in machining-101 that if you drill a hole and then ream the hole with an unsupported reamer the reamer will follow the existing hole. If the location is critical you'll need to single point bore the hole before reaming. Most machinist/toolmakers will considere this as gospel UNLESS they are exposed to an area of industry where holes are drilled and reamed and the location is held to within a few tenths (as in .0001").
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So support the reamer and it'll ream a tapered hole....... what's the gain? :) IMO the "areas of industry" you're referring to in no way apply to the article ref'd!

al
 
jackie schmidt said:
I would bet a paycheck that if a shooter logged on to Benchrest.com and said that reaming the inside of case necks to achieve the proper wall thickness was the same as using a proper neck turning tool to do the OD's, the entire board would point out the basic error in that assumption.

If you put forth the time and effort to get all of your cases ready to go to the line, and the wall thickness still varies as much as .001, would you then say "I think it is a great way to make cases"??
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Jackie, I can't speak to how the o.d.'s of his necks check. That was one area I wish the article would have covered.

And yes, the aim of working on case necks is to eliminate the wall thickness variation and outside neck turning is the standard for this. My point...probably badly worded as I was only on my first cup of coffee;)...was that outside neck turning cases when the inner case necks aren't round and/or straight is an area that people may want to look into.

I can't know how the inside neck of a Lapua 220R case necked to 6mm checks, as I've never checked one. But I can darn sure speak to how a Lapua 6BR inner case neck expanded to .30 checks. And it ain't pretty.....:eek:

Good shotin'. :) -Al
 
Um

both surfaces need to be faced to get it wright.ream then turn seems the besst way.I have reamed expanded and turned.But now expand ream and turn.I can see no difference in expanding and turning,or fireforming and reaming one surface will still have inconsistencies in surface finish.Who cares what people think the target tells the story.
 
both surfaces need to be faced to get it wright.ream then turn seems the besst way.I have reamed expanded and turned.But now expand ream and turn.I can see no difference in expanding and turning,or fireforming and reaming one surface will still have inconsistencies in surface finish.Who cares what people think the target tells the story.
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Dan explained his process to me last year at a match. The very first question I asked him was how does he control neck thickness variance. From his reply it sounds like he's got it all worked out. This is from someone who has a working knowledge of injection molding equipment, gating, venting, shrink rates and other factors involved in die design. He comprehends the concept of "splitting tenths". He's not some hack with a Harbor Freight lathe and drill press in his barn. Having shot next to Dan and scored his targets it appears his system works. As usual, YMMV... :D
 
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