How important is neck turning?

well, never turned a neck in my life, I don't shoot competition. That being said a good rifle with factory or handloads will easily shoot Sub-MOA, don't see the point in turning necks for hunting.
 
Great article, Dave. Nails it.

William Suter said:
He used the LC brass
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LC is .308 brass is excellent brass. I lucked out and traded a couple hundred LC 30-06 for unfired .308's a while back.

Cross the course HP rifle shooting is position shooting, including 2 rapid fire strings, w/iron sights, NOT benchrest, but still requires a good rifle and decent loads. Due to the unlimited availability of M2 ball and M72 (30-06) match brass at the time, I chose to have my match rifles built in 30-06, back when the .308 was in favor. After experimenting with everything from moly bullets to neck turning brass, I decided that the M2 ball brass would clean up well enough to clean any official targets/positions out to 300 yards without neck turning. I did neck turn M 72 brass and had a special sizing die made to eliminate expander for 600-1000. This combination produced ammo capable of shooting 97% possible scores required for high master classification.

Neck turning did produce concentric ammo and I'm sure the neck turning helped w/long range accuracy, but not sure how much was accuracy and how much was due in large part to the mental advantage of having more confidence in the ammo.

I hunted w/several 30-06 factory rifles and couldn't see any difference in turned or unturned brass in those rifles.
 
to me neck turning is for when you use bushing dies to control neck tension. otherwise if you just use the bushing die with no expander you're pushing the brass neck thickness to the inside of the neck which will increase loaded round runout in my experience. every case I neck turn, I reload with bushing dies. neck turning will reduce runout big time usually if you neck turn and pair it with a bushing die. ideally you use it because you had the gunsmith custom make the neck of the chamber to your specs and the brass is being controlled to your specific wishes.

I do use a bushing FL length sizer for 223 without neck turning, but thats because the bushing on that die setup sizes the brass just enough to have the expander just kiss it and it seems to work great on that combo. but it took some tinkering to get there.
 
I've loaded for +/- 100 different cartridges from 17 ackley hornet through 475 Turnbull. Never turned a neck on a cartridge. IMHO, simply un-necessary on a standard SAAMI spec chamber/factory rifle.
ya,

GWB
 
For non-competition 'quality' rifle, annealing is the better choice. As Alf pointed out, a 'skinny' neck in a fat chamber creates the same non-concentric as bad brass. Kinda like jamming the lands to solve concenticity problems. Got a bucket of LC07 308W brass and never turned any of it but I don't have competitive barrel/rifle. Does good enough though.
 
spotstalkshoot said:
I would sit down with your friend and actually process brass and load some ammo. Take notes, ask questions.
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He gave me 50 pieces of his processed brass and I have already duplicated his load. I just have a bunch of the same Lake City LR brass that hasn't been annealed or neck turned and just wondering if I really need to turn the necks. Annealing...yes!
 
Any smith worth his salt should stamp the barrel with the neck dimension if it was chambered with a tight neck reamer.
 
What about cleaning the necks up.
Maybe only touching 80% of the thickest part of the neck? I've done this thinking it would help neck tension if it were closer to being the same thickness.
 
Skim cutting(cleaning up the necks) is a one time deal. Can be done on a case trimmer with the correct cutting adapter. May need to be done to truly duplicate the accuracy. 100-200 cases would probably last you. A couple hours work.
 
So I normally will run a mandrel, 2 thousandths smaller than the bullet diameter, down the cases if I suspect there might be some inconsistency in neck tension. This helps push any uncertainty to the outside of the case and guarantees 2 thou neck tension. This probably only works on normal sized chambers. I've never run a tight neck chamber so I can't speak for that.
 
RockChucker1980 said:
What about cleaning the necks up.
Maybe only touching 80% of the thickest part of the neck? I've done this thinking it would help neck tension if it were closer to being the same thickness.
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Why not got for 100% cleanup? If you are going to the bother in the first place. If it's because it requires a deeper cut than you are comfortable with, that brass ain't worth bothering to neck turn.

- DAA
 
If you are very worried about necks I would just buy quality brass. Lapua, Alpha, and Peterson all make brass with very consistent neck thickness in lots. I have see a lot of variation in other brands such as Hornady.
 
All remington and winchester brass. Yes probably not worth turning the necks on. Better to get the hang of neck turning on that brass than ruin some expensive brass though.
 
When I was chasing leg points, I would turn my necks on the 600 yd ammo. Had my tool set to just remove excess on the thick necks on my LC brass. Some cases would cut all the way around, some would shave a bit off 1 side, some it would cut nothing. Did it help? Probably just the confidence factor. The LC LR brass is very good stuff, perhaps slightly better than the M852.
 
Jerryrigged said:
When I was chasing leg points, I would turn my necks on the 600 yd ammo. Had my tool set to just remove excess on the thick necks on my LC brass. Some cases would cut all the way around, some would shave a bit off 1 side, some it would cut nothing. Did it help? Probably just the confidence factor. The LC LR brass is very good stuff, perhaps slightly better than the M852.
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Exactly same experience with LC M72 brass (30-06) 600 & beyond; Used unturned M2 brass out to 300. Excellent brass and I agree that the neck turning not worth the effort short range but turned 600-1000. Like you, scores were better, but not sure if more accurate or just mental advantage?? Whatever, it put more points on the score card.:) Neck turned LC M72 brass, Mod. 70 NM:
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No, was after my eyes gave up and the service rifle (Garand) front sight looked like a pitchfork. :LOL:
Pre-64 Mod 70 w/aperture sights. Shot out original barrel and was on the 2nd barrel by Mark Chandlyn at the time. That action has over 21,000 rounds through it and all parts are original.
 
I tried it but don't do it anymore. I don't own anything with a custom barrel anymore and don't really see a difference in accuracy with factory barrels. It helped on the chronograph with consistent velocity which would lead to long range accuracy
 
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