Turned a lotta necks
- Thread starter jackie schmidt
- Start date
Dick Grosbier
Club Coordinator
Sounds like someone was fine tuning their anvil near the end of the video.
Dick
Dick
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JerrySharrett
Senile Member
One other suggestion on the turning mandrel itself. It needs to have 3 different diameters. Starting from the tailstock end, that diameter needs to be a few thousnts smaller than the bore of the neck being turned. The second diameter needs to be exactly the same diameter as your bullet, as discussed earlier. The diameter nearest the chuck needs to be a few thousants smaller than the finished neck diameter of the brass being turned. This creates a parking place for the turning tool since you are better off never moving the tool in and out after you establish the size you want. Park at the chuck, turn to thee shoulder in a fine federate and then just crank back to the parking spot to change the brass.
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Jerry W
Jerry Wick
Jerry - I think the idea is to hand feed to the shoulder to remove the bulk and then power feed back towards the chuck to get a nice finish. At least that's how I've done it, and that seems to be how Jackie is describing it.
Jerry W.
jackie schmidt
New member
Sorry 'bout that. .0016
jackie schmidt
New member
As for the link to the article, the only thing I have modified is the way I place the case on the mandrel. I now use a case holder that has a machined pice pressed into it that allows me to install it in a Jacobs Chuck. I got this idea from Mike Bryant.
You can easily see it in the YouTube video. Quick, and easy.
You can easily see it in the YouTube video. Quick, and easy.
Mike Bryant
Active member
Jackie, have you tried not turning off power to your lathe when you push the case onto the mandrel? When I was doing it that way, I was turning off the power to my lathe between cases just as you were in the video. I turned 700 cases in January chucking a Pumkin in a 6 jaw chuck and using a floating Sinclair case holder to push the case onto the mandrel all without turning off power to the lathe. That was about the easiest and quickest I've ever turned case necks. They seemed to mike spot on from start to finish.
goodgrouper
tryingtobeabettergrouper
I switched to a .271" neck a few years ago and a couple respected shooters (including one HOFer) told me not to do it. I did it anyway as some of my earlier tests with other calibers showed no loss of accuracy with the thicker necks. So I ordered up a new action and built a new gun to run my new thicker neck reamer with. Right off the bat, I thought I'd screwed up. I couldn't hardly get five bullets to touch. I went through the standard BR troubleshooting guidebook and nothing helped. I started cursing the fat necks and eventually had my reamer turned down to .263". But when I went and chambered up another barrel with the .263, to my dismay, I still couldn't get five bullets to touch! It turned out that my super dooper cuddly bear action that I just dropped $1500 on was more of a pooper than super. My loss of accuracy had nothing to do with the brass neck size and everything to do with an action that was nothing short of a piece of junk. I would have been better off competing with a Rem 700 at half the cost! Now I wish I'd left my reamer and my brass alone and just got an action worth a hill of beans!
JerrySharrett
Senile Member
Jerry W, either way will work but power feeding to the shoulder gives much better control of where the tool stops, and, hand feeding over the neck material on 262 or 263 cases you are going to have big time trouble caused by the case spinning on the arbor.
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M
mks
Guest
Jerry,
Thanks for the ideas. Clever slide hammer. So you must remove the shellholder from the case before turning, right? I used a K&M shellholder in the tailstock. It tightened and grabbed the rim on one case, causing the neck to spin on the mandrel. That may have caused part of the shifting and runout, but not all. It had started to occur beforehand. Is there a shellholder out there that doesn't tighten on turning?
Thanks,
Keith
Thanks for the ideas. Clever slide hammer. So you must remove the shellholder from the case before turning, right? I used a K&M shellholder in the tailstock. It tightened and grabbed the rim on one case, causing the neck to spin on the mandrel. That may have caused part of the shifting and runout, but not all. It had started to occur beforehand. Is there a shellholder out there that doesn't tighten on turning?
Thanks,
Keith
Thanks Jerry, it's a good article.
I have a question or two.
I notice that you don't bother to support the rear of the case (when turning the neck) but Lee uses a shellholder in his photos.
Apart from the idea that the shellholder might be handy to push the case onto the mandrel and then remove it, I suppose that this would require a rotating tailstock chuck - or is the case rim allowed to spin in the shellholder?
* doghunter *
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jackie schmidt
New member
The case just spins freely in the shell holder.
One thing you want to avoid is over complicating the entire thing. It is really a simple set-up. I have never had any trouble with the cases turning ore slipping on the mandrel, and if you do use a mist cooler, it takes away any problems of heat expansion.
As with sny machine shop set-up, a good dose of common sense goes a long way. And keep in mind what you are trying to achieve, ie, cases that are all the same, correct, and uniform in the case wall thickness. If they are not, trouble shoot your set-up and see why.
One thing you want to avoid is over complicating the entire thing. It is really a simple set-up. I have never had any trouble with the cases turning ore slipping on the mandrel, and if you do use a mist cooler, it takes away any problems of heat expansion.
As with sny machine shop set-up, a good dose of common sense goes a long way. And keep in mind what you are trying to achieve, ie, cases that are all the same, correct, and uniform in the case wall thickness. If they are not, trouble shoot your set-up and see why.
JerrySharrett
Senile Member
Which Jerry??
In my process:
The slide hammer/shell holder simply slips on, tailstock is cranked to press case on, slide hammer/w shell holder is removed.
Then after neck us turned, slide hammer is dropped on (opening down) and case is pecked off.
Next case...
JerrySharrett
Senile Member
Jim, was it the action or the gluing job? i.e. how did you determine it was the action itself? Just askin.
TB says they are all "do-it-yourself-kits" now!! Even in hos book he shows some mods.
martin zuck
Member
Maybe someone mentioned it but if they did I missed it. Lee makes an inexpensive little three jaw chuck (10.00) that I modified to work in the tail stock. Made up a threaded mandrel that screws into the the little chuck body that is held in a standard drill chuck on the tail stock. The end of the mandrel going in to the Lee chuck is turned to fit into the case primer pocket. The chuck has a knurled O.D. That can be opened or closed easily. I use it by opening it up,pushing the case on guided by the part of the mandrel that fits into the primer pocket,open the chuck, back off the tail a little an turn my neck. I'm not to good describing this so hopefully you'll get the general concept. It probably took me longer to write this than it did to modify the Lee chuck an turn several cases!
goodgrouper
tryingtobeabettergrouper
Absolutely positive it was the action. It's quite the story actually how we diagnosed it if you care to hear it? If not, read no further...
I'm embarrassed to say that it wasn't even me who diagnosed it. And I'm the dumb one who didn't take the first hint when right out of the box the bolt wouldn't close on an empty chamber! (proof right there that these makers didn't even put the bolt in the receiver, or proof test it like they claim they do). I should have sent it back right then and there but my 'smith was able to quickly fix that problem so I thought all was well. I came to find out that was just the tip of the iceberg. There were still multitudes of other things wrong with it, and it took me 7 local matches and one Nationals to finally figure it out. (All the while I'm thinking I should've listened to that HOFer about those darn fat necks!). So I'm at the Nationals in Phoenix, and I'm wondering why the heck I even showed up since my gun wasn't even competitive. I'm shooting in 80th some-odd place for two aggs and nothing I change is making any difference in my groups. They're just plain ugly. So I think it was Wednesday or Thursday evening, I'm packing up my stuff to leave thinking I can swing by the Grand Canyon on my way home and at least make something out of this trip. Mike Rattigan walks by and asks what I'm doing, we still have a couple of days of shooting left. I tell him something isn't working and I think it's my fat necks so I'm heading home. He says, "bull****, put your stuff down and bring your rife over to the motorhome right now". Since I was shooting on the bench next to him during the day, he knew I had tried all the simple fixes, so he didn't have to look there. So he immediately starting looking at my action and my bolt. I'm sure the look on my face was hysterical when the first word out of his mouth was "uh-oh". He begins to show me four or five things wrong and I'm just beside myself with 31 flavors of emotions running through me. I was so flustered that I could barely spit out a "thank you" as I grabbed my action and headed for the door. Mike asked where I was going and I replied that there definitely wasn't any need to keep shooting with a POS like this, and I was even more determined to leave than I was before. He says, "sit back down, I think we can fix you up". He then proceeds to take out 5 or 6 actions of the same type as mine and show me where mine was messed up, and where he had fixed some of his that had the same problems. So we've got parts scattered all over the kitchen table, swapping and trying this and that. At about that time, the owner of the shop that made all those actions pokes his head in the door to ask Mike something and sees we've got familiar looking action guts all over the place! Talk about getting caught with your pants down! Anyhow, we courteously excused ourselves and no mention of anything was made. So we get some of Mike's parts installed into my action and Mike gives me some brass to use (because all of mine won't fit being fat), and I hurry out to the line to try a basic load just before the sun sets. It's the first 5 bullets that I've gotten to touch in almost a year! I'm happy enough that I hang around the next day and shoot despite not having any time to try different loads. I ran what I found the evening before all day and worked my way up into the low 20's! Felt so good to have a working gun again. My hat's been off to Mike ever since. The guy really went above and beyond the call of duty to help a fellow shooter out, and he'd never met me before in his life. Only problem was, he made me give him back his parts Saturday afternoon! But I got to keep his brass.....
So, that's a long winded story to say yes, you and Tony are right about the do-it-yourself kits, and no, neck diameter don't mean nuthin'.
JerrySharrett
Senile Member
Absolutely positive it was the action. It's quite the story actually how we diagnosed it if you care to hear it? If not, read no further...
I'm embarrassed to say that it wasn't even me who diagnosed it. And I'm the dumb one who didn't take the first hint when right out of the box the bolt wouldn't close on an empty chamber! (proof right there that these makers didn't even put the bolt in the receiver, or proof test it like they claim they do). I should have sent it back right then and there but my 'smith was able to quickly fix that problem so I thought all was well. I came to find out that was just the tip of the iceberg. There were still multitudes of other things wrong with it, and it took me 7 local matches and one Nationals to finally figure it out. (All the while I'm thinking I should've listened to that HOFer about those darn fat necks!). So I'm at the Nationals in Phoenix, and I'm wondering why the heck I even showed up since my gun wasn't even competitive. I'm shooting in 80th some-odd place for two aggs and nothing I change is making any difference in my groups. They're just plain ugly. So I think it was Wednesday or Thursday evening, I'm packing up my stuff to leave thinking I can swing by the Grand Canyon on my way home and at least make something out of this trip. Mike Rattigan walks by and asks what I'm doing, we still have a couple of days of shooting left. I tell him something isn't working and I think it's my fat necks so I'm heading home. He says, "bull****, put your stuff down and bring your rife over to the motorhome right now". Since I was shooting on the bench next to him during the day, he knew I had tried all the simple fixes, so he didn't have to look there. So he immediately starting looking at my action and my bolt. I'm sure the look on my face was hysterical when the first word out of his mouth was "uh-oh". He begins to show me four or five things wrong and I'm just beside myself with 31 flavors of emotions running through me. I was so flustered that I could barely spit out a "thank you" as I grabbed my action and headed for the door. Mike asked where I was going and I replied that there definitely wasn't any need to keep shooting with a POS like this, and I was even more determined to leave than I was before. He says, "sit back down, I think we can fix you up". He then proceeds to take out 5 or 6 actions of the same type as mine and show me where mine was messed up, and where he had fixed some of his that had the same problems. So we've got parts scattered all over the kitchen table, swapping and trying this and that. At about that time, the owner of the shop that made all those actions pokes his head in the door to ask Mike something and sees we've got familiar looking action guts all over the place! Talk about getting caught with your pants down! Anyhow, we courteously excused ourselves and no mention of anything was made. So we get some of Mike's parts installed into my action and Mike gives me some brass to use (because all of mine won't fit being fat), and I hurry out to the line to try a basic load just before the sun sets. It's the first 5 bullets that I've gotten to touch in almost a year! I'm happy enough that I hang around the next day and shoot despite not having any time to try different loads. I ran what I found the evening before all day and worked my way up into the low 20's! Felt so good to have a working gun again. My hat's been off to Mike ever since. The guy really went above and beyond the call of duty to help a fellow shooter out, and he'd never met me before in his life. Only problem was, he made me give him back his parts Saturday afternoon! But I got to keep his brass.....
So, that's a long winded story to say yes, you and Tony are right about the do-it-yourself kits, and no, neck diameter don't mean nuthin'.
Interesting story, thanks much. Am I to assume the problem was with/in the bolt? And, you changed barrels too?
I've seen Mike Rattigan spend a lot of time at shoots helping other shooters. Great guy.
That is why when he brought out his book some time back I bought 5 copies and gave 4 of them to friends.
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goodgrouper
tryingtobeabettergrouper
I should also mention that Butch Fjoser heard about my struggles the first couple of days at the Nationals, and he donated one of his barrels to me to see if that would help. I offered to pay for it because I was desperate to try anything, but he wouldn't take a penny. What a guy that Butch! I'm forever in his debt too just like Mike's.
Anyhow, a new barrel didn't fix the bad groups. But when I had Mike's parts AND the new barrel together, it worked marvelously. After the Nationals were over and my action parts were back in my gun, the sweet barrel wouldn't shoot five bullets touching again. So I wrangled up some new parts and fixed others like how Mike showed me, and wallah, the gun started shooting again. The very next match, I shot a teen agg at 200 yards and won the 2 gun, the LV grand, the LV200. So I'd say that's pretty proof positive that your action makes a world of difference!
I'm forever in his debt too just like Mike's.Anyhow, a new barrel didn't fix the bad groups. But when I had Mike's parts AND the new barrel together, it worked marvelously. After the Nationals were over and my action parts were back in my gun, the sweet barrel wouldn't shoot five bullets touching again. So I wrangled up some new parts and fixed others like how Mike showed me, and wallah, the gun started shooting again. The very next match, I shot a teen agg at 200 yards and won the 2 gun, the LV grand, the LV200. So I'd say that's pretty proof positive that your action makes a world of difference!
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goodgrouper
tryingtobeabettergrouper
Oops, sorry. It looks like we were typing at the same time.
Yes, the problem was in the bolt, the shroud, the pin, the spring, the handle, and the sear. Basically, it was a total disaster!