Frank Murphy's method
220 Russian to 6PPC - FLM
You need:
--virgin Lapua 220R brass
--6 PPC chamber with a narrow neck (often .262, but not always)
--a 6 PPC FL die
--two neck turners (yes, unfortunately, two, unless you actually like adjusting the damned things)
--a 6 mm expander mandrel that is .001"-.002" bigget than the mandrel on the turner
--a Wilson trimmer with the .220R shellholder and the PPC shellholder
--deburring tool
Steps consist of:
--weight sort the brass, or not, depending on your religion
--lube the inside of the neck (Q-tip, case lube)
--run the brass over the expanding mandrel
--check lengths. If your brass is like mine, they'll all be the same; this is the miracle of Lapua brass in action. If not, trim as little as possible to make them all the same length. Chamfer or deburr the inner lip of the case neck (outer doesn't matter at this point).
--use a set of feeler gauges, if you like, and adjust the first trimmer to get you to within a half a thou or less of your goal for neck thickness
--adjust the length of cut so that with your brass the cutter just kisses the shoulder when the case mouth hits the stop
--use the brass that didn't weigh right to set up this process
--lube the mandrel on the turner and lube the inside of the case neck
--run a case on the trimmer; if its too tight, get a bigger expander mandrel and start over
--give all the cases their preliminary turning, keeping everything clean and free of chips to avoid marring the neck surface
--set up the second trimmer similarly to give a thickness of .0001 to .0003 over your ideal final thickness (it'll thin with the first few firings). After you've fiddled around for a while adjusting the trimmer, you'll see why I said tp get two trimmers.
--run all the brass through this second turning. As this is the finish cut, use a somewhat higher speed and a very fine feed; you might want to run the brass twice.
--use your ball mic or case checker to check for thickness and uniformity (sorry, I didn't put these on your shopping list)
--degrease your brass, using hot soap and water (simple green works well--just boil the brass in a solution of this) or lacquer thinner or whatever. I use boiling detergent solutions when I'm feeling environmental, sovlent when I'm in a hurry.
--if the neck won't grip a bullet when it comes off the turner, FL size and do not reexpand, for a firm grip
--deburr case mouth. If you believe in a long taper internal chamfer, now is the time to cut it.
--put a bullet in a case to make a dummy round. Check neck OD (it should be OK, but why take chances?), and check for fit in the chamber gauge if you have one, in the chamber (striker assembly removed) if you don't. Ideally, the prepared case will chamber freely as the case neck enters the neck of the chamber, indicating that you didn't make the neck too fat, but develop
some feel as you close the bolt, indicating a close headspace fit between the round and the chamber. Usually, this won't happen, as the brass is manufactured not to be longer than spec and the chamber not to be shorter. If you trust "bullet jam" (see below) to hold the case back against the bolt face (I do for short headspaced PPC chambers), all is well. If not, over-expand the neck to something like 6.5 mm or 7 mm, then go back to the FL die and adjust to get a crush fit. I avoid this for the PPC, out of fear of what will happen with all that expanding and sizing of the neck.
--prime, fill with your usual 6 PPC powder, using a long drop tube and vibration to get as much in as you can, bringing the powder up into the neck. This is counter to the usual advice to FF with reduced loads, but that advice is wrong: fire forming means deforming the brass beyond its elastic limit, and that calls for high pressure. As is, the case capacity is reduced though
chamber capacity is not, and you won't be able to get in as much powder or produce as much pressure as you will with your subsequent PPC loads.
--seat the bullet well out, for a good hard jam into the lands
--fire the rounds
--apply the primer pocket uniformer, and flash hole uniformer/deburrer if you care to--many feel these steps are not needed with this high quality brass
--at this point, some people run through another neck turning; I don't think you need to, but opinions differ
--I trim the case mouths and deburr here, just a thou or so, to be sure everything is square.
--Done.
As I said, opinions about how to do this are like hemorrhoids (you know the joke), and I only say that this way makes sense to me. Others may do it differently, and I'll probably do it differently too, a few months from now.
FLM
