Thread: how little reworking of the brass while reloading is necessary

I have a friend who basically dosent resize brass when reloading and has really good results which is making me think I might try his approach

he basically knocks the primer out and replaces it without resizing the neck and fills it with the powder charge, seats the bullet and crimps
using it in the rifle it was fireformed he has no tight bolt on loading which surprises me

what potential issues can arise with this approach if loaded bullets are only used in the chamber they formed in?

Haha - eventually you'll end up with a loaded round stuck in the chamber refusing to be extracted . . . . Same thing happens when you only neck size.

I gave up neck sizing only for this reason, using the neck sized stuff meant that every round had to be tried in the chamber before leaving home to avoid embarrassment at the range or out hunting. Unless you remove the firing pin checking them is an unnecessary hazard.

Yeah...nah. The more bang bang, the harder and longer it gets, until one day forcing it in only ends in tears.

Depends on the neck clearance of the rifle and the brass. Some rifles (normally target rifles) are chambered with a 'tight neck' which requires the brass to be matched - this can be by obtaining a certain type of brass or by neck turning the brass to a specific neck thickness. This means that the clearances are minimum on firing, which is OK for a target type rifle but not for a hunting or plinking rifle which might have to digest factory supplied ammo from different manufacturers.

Your friend may have just gotten lucky, and ended up with a rifle and brass combo that's on minimum specs already which is allowing the brass' neck to spring back after firing to adequately grip the next bullet without the neck needing to be resized down but this is uncommon. More likely with a factory chamber is that the brass has quite a safety factor in terms of dimensional clearance to prevent high pressures from a tight necked chamber pinching the case neck, and this means the case neck is blown out on firing and the new projectile drops straight in.

Growth in case length is different, and cases should be measured and trimmed if needed on each firing.

Full length sizing lengthens cases meaning trimming is required. Neck sizing just enough to hold the projectile tightly is much more brass friendly and results in longer case life. It sort of depends on the cartridge but some of my 223 brass was neck sized 10 times before trimming or full length sizing

Originally Posted by Tentman

Haha - eventually you'll end up with a loaded round stuck in the chamber refusing to be extracted . . . . Same thing happens when you only neck size.

I gave up neck sizing only for this reason, using the neck sized stuff meant that every round had to be tried in the chamber before leaving home to avoid embarrassment at the range or out hunting. Unless you remove the firing pin checking them is an unnecessary hazard.

Change die types - if you use a full length bushing die you can set the neck tension you want to the case's neck thickness and then set the die height to control the shoulder length (headspacing) measurement. The length of the case often changes due to the expander ball on a traditional die and the case being dragged down over it as the case is withdrawn from the die. The only thing you need to be aware of here is cases with uneven thickness necks, you can end up with runout on the projectile as the case neck is sized to the external dimension and not the internal like with a traditional expander ball setup.

In 20+ years of neck sizing Iv never had a loaded round stuck in my rifle.....

Originally Posted by blip

In 20+ years of neck sizing Iv never had a loaded round stuck in my rifle.....

Those are fighting words @blip,
The last person I heard utter those words was seen barely an hour later sheepishly retreating from the mound with a cartridge firmly stuck in his rifles chamber. Came close myself a couple of times as well. I still neck size for the low pressure loads I use in my old soldiers and below a certain pressure cases can be neck sized endlessly but not for full power loads
Regards Grandpamac.

or yo uwill have big fat red hind standing looking at you from 50 yards away and you and mate will be furiously trying to close bolt on the 7x57mauser with neck sized ammunition and watch with tears of frustration as she walks away....
partial length resize is the middle ground between neck and full length resize and what I do.

It seems bit far fetched to me he's not atleast neck sizing, every rifle I've ever reloaded for the necks were too loose to hold a projectile.
What cartridge and what rifle?

I'm a lazy reloader amd my brass prep is only resizing with a bushing die.
I have some 6.5creed brass with 7 firings and I've never trimmed them, just bump back the shoulder a little bit amd and minimal neck sizing with the bushing.

That would be the minimum you can do and still expect reliable/repeatable results in my opinion.

Greetings all,
You can get away with a lot if pressures are kept low. German target shooters 120 or so years ago loaded at the range without any case sizing. The fired primer was knocked out and a new one pressed in. The case was not sized in any way. A little packet of powder was placed in the case and a projectile seated by hand. The front driving band of the projectile was over size and butted up to the mouth of the case. That was it. Bang and repeat. So a minimal to no re sizing regime is possible. I do something similar for my old .303 rifles. Cases are neck sized in a Lee Loader after knocking out the old primer with a punch. I do run an expander button in and out of the neck to keep neck tension as even as possible but likely could omit that step. Cases are primed with a hand tool, charged with powder and the projectile seated with the Lee Loader. This is how bench rest shooters used to load their ammo with flasher gear than the Lee Loader but the same principle. Not much different to those old Germans either.
Regards Grandpamac.

Originally Posted by Bill999

he basically knocks the primer out and replaces it without resizing the neck and fills it with the powder charge

This bit doesn't really make sense. If the neck has opened up to release the old bullet, the new bullet should just about drop freely into the case. The seating die will push bullets down against the resistance in the neck - it doesn't hold onto the bullet so it can't prevent the bullet from falling in if there's no neck tension at all.

So you'd expect that your friend's cartridge lengths would end up all over the place. The die won't be able to control the bullet seating properly. It might be able to crimp them in place wherever they may be after they have fallen in "some amount" (probably when they're resting on top of the powder). But that can't be concentric or precise.

If there is plenty of tension there when seating then there's a problem. I have had one gunsmith screw up a build for me where they used the wrong reamer and gave me a rifle that had almost zero clearance around the neck on my loaded rounds. I did not notice immediately, as the rounds chambered without any noticeable effort and fired OK (they were mild loads). Then when I went to reload the brass, the cases didn't need neck sizing. With the neck being so tight and the brass having a little springback, the result was there was enough tension to hold a bullet securely without any sizing. This is a dangerous situation - because it can cause a pressure spike during firing.

So I suggest you don't copy your mate. He could have a similarly dangerous situation going on. Best case scenario: you don't have a stupidly tight neck and your ammo is just shit.

Maybe the powder is stopping the bullet dropping into the case and setting the seating height

This talk seems like ''the completely backwards principal, reloading is all about trying to make everything as consistant as possible.

My experience - 308 Lupua cases. I neck size (Lee Collet neck die) - keep up to or under the max book values, every 6 firings or so if bolts feels stiffer, then - anneal and full lenght size, - then back to, neck sizing, got 30+ and the cases well just don't seem to be able to kill them. Have biffed some as primer pockets felt loose. Still got 80 from the 100 Lupua cases. More the barrel is starting to lose it, but has been well in excess of 3000 rounds, still shoots a lazy better than .3 inch.

Originally Posted by Tentman

Haha - eventually you'll end up with a loaded round stuck in the chamber refusing to be extracted . . . . Same thing happens when you only neck size.

I gave up neck sizing only for this reason, using the neck sized stuff meant that every round had to be tried in the chamber before leaving home to avoid embarrassment at the range or out hunting. Unless you remove the firing pin checking them is an unnecessary hazard.

Exactly. I tried neck sizing for a couple of years. Tight chambers in the field. Need to keep count of how many times you neck only.

Went back to FLS but measure it now and same accuracy.

If I need to pull bullets. Then I do a part neck size when I load the cases again. That's it.