OK, I have finally decided the time has come to start turning the necks on my brass. Fought it long enough but now I have given in to the inevitable.
My question is this,

"What is the best neck turning tool to buy?"

Keeping in mind that since I shoot a reasonably high volume the tool needs to be suitable for doing a bit of volume but also needs to be accurate. Don't want some cheap product that will ruin my brass.

Bruce,

I use the old Forster lathe-type. Works fine but you might want to check out Sinclair and see what available in the hand-held types.

Maybe someone will weigh in who has worked with both types.

Bruce, unless you have a rifle with a tight fitting neck or a case that results in a thick neck that can be fitted, I wouldnt bother. Do you crimp these loads? Crimping often negates neck fitting in the sense that contact area is lost in and behind the crimp (on a roll crimp).
Just some observations

Bruce,

I'm with smallfry - don't turn unless you absolutely have to....

I bought the K&M "Micro-adjustable Neck Turner with standard steel mandrel" from Russ Hayden shooter's supply:
http://www.shooters-supply.com/reloading_equipment.html

If the neck is real tight on the mandrel, the included case holder is difficult to get tight enough, it likes to unscrew the shellholder. Then I got one of Sinclair's case holders, but turning by hand is way too slow for me:
http://www.sinclairintl.com/cgi-bin/category.cgi?category=RECPNT&item=NT-H&type=store

I ended up chucking the first 1/2" or so of the case in a 1/2" variable speed key-less chuck drill, and feed the turning tool in by hand. My brass was really tight on the mandrel, and the tool got hot after just a few cases, so I put icewater in a zip-loc bag and lay the tool on the bag to cool in between cases. I lube the mandrel with Imperial sizing die wax, clear the chips with a tooth brush, and wipe off with towell between each case. The chuck leaves three very slight scribe marks on the base. Pack a lunch, I can do about 20 per hour (including case mouth deburring)....

Take care,

Bill

Bill,
That sounds like a really slow process. I was hoping for something that would let me do about 1 per minute.
Perhaps I should stick with my present method of using an ID button to get the ID consistent and then firing all the brass and sorting by velocity. That method gives me very small velocity spread among a group of brass but costs a bit of money in components as well as barrel wear.

Yep, a slow process and I dread it! It might be 25/hour, but not much faster than that. I was not rushing it, wiping off case lube, cleaning primer pockets, de-burring, etc., during this process, so if you were just turning necks it might go a little faster. And believe me, going to the variable speed drill is way faster than turning by hand!

Sounds like you want to turn necks so that yo can use bushing dies to reduce runout. You might want to give the Lee collet neck sizing die a go, they seem to do well in keeping the necks square, and it has the added benefit of NO case lube! I re-size my 308 with a Lee collet.

You could also check the runout on each case, and straighten them with a hole drilled into a board, or just separate them and use only the good ones for score?

Bill

Bruce, the only thing that comes to mind for your specific question (i.e. high volume neck turning) would be the Wilson lathe-like tool (not the same as the Wilson trimmer). Sinclair sells it, and also sells a power screwdriver adapter - which will probably speed things up some.

I have actually never used the Wilson tool myself, so I'll leave it to others to provide input about quality of tool and results. Wilson tools have a good reputation in general, though.

Question: with the Gracey and Giraud trimmers out there, are there any equivalent (super power) tools available for neck turning?? I don't think I have seen any. Probably because neck turning is mostly used in the realm of BR, where shooters are typically happy to spend a long time on case preparation in fairly low volume, whereas the high-volume crowd usually belongs to the High-Power or Varmint camp??

- mike

Sinclair sells a 0.001 oversized mandrel that fits into a die-like arrangement. You lube the case neck with imperial wax, run it through the press to expand by 0.001 and then the turning arrangement is MUCH easier. After that you clean up the cases with rubbing alcohol, let them dry, and run them through your sizer die and take off from there.

I can't imagine turning with this process as there would be much greater friction to overcome thus making it that much harder. Maybe this is why so many are against turning???

All of that said, unless you have a chamber that's too tight for the brass cases you have, OR, you have a rifle/case combo capable of remarkable accuracy, it's probably not worth the time spent.

Good luck.

Reed

I went ahead and ordered the recommended K & M tool. Thanks.

Reed,
You are correct about the need for neck turning not falling under the regular realm of things. To the best of my understanding there are two reasons to neck turn.
The first is if you have a tight neck chamber and need to neck turn in order to make your specific brass fit your specific chamber, not my specific reason.
The second reason is in order to be able to more closely control neck tension of the loaded rounds. I use a Redding competition die set which has collars of varying diameters in order to get different neck tension. In order for this method to work properly the necks all have to be consistent.

As normal circumstances have gone in the past I have gotten by without using a neck turner by using an I.D. button sizer but have had a couple of problems from that lack. I participate in 600 yard prone target shooting monthly and 1000 yard target shooting about 6 times a year.
Neck tension seems to be the most important aspect to improving my loads at the present time. In the past I went thru some pretty radical steps to obtain the most consistent brass possible. Since the matches normally take 50 shots, I segregate the brass into lots of 50. I do the normal prep such as trimming and chamfering and weighing to get consistent groups of brass. Then, I load all 50 pieces with a good quality consistent load and shoot them across a chronograph (using 2 minute intervals to keep the temp consistent) and mark the velocity on the case and then further segregate the brass from lowest to highest velocity. Within a group of 50 I am normally able to get a 40-50 fps spread for all 50 shots, but each row of 10 will normally be from 10-20 fps spread.
What I want to do with a neck turner is to fine tune the brass even further so that I can get about 10-20 fps spread thru the entire 50 shots.

At 600 yards and closer this approaches overkill, but anything to help the situation at 1000 yards is something for me to try. Maybe it will be a lot of work for no real gain but I am at a point where I wish to find out.

Befere you think that shooting 50 shots across a chronograph in a single sitting does not necessarily lead to consistent velocity, realize the following. Three times now have taken a full box of 50 pieces of brass which were previously shot across a chronograph as mentioned above, with the further sorting of velocity from lowest ot highest to fine tune the brass sorting as far as possible. At the second firing of the group you cannot expect to exactly duplicate the velocity obtained in the first firing simply due to outside factors such as differing powder canisters and temperature and distance from the chronograph screens.
What does seem to happen is that the relative velocity between the 50 pieces of brass is consistent thru multiple firings.

[ 05-02-2003, 23:08: Message edited by: Bruce Gordon ]

Here's a source for a power neck turning system. Somewhat popular in the benchrest crowd and kind of pricey. You will need the case lathe and the neck turner for your initial caliber, then a new mandrel for each additional calibler. Most just buy additional neck turners to save the setup when switching caliblers.

Don Nielson's Benchrest Toys

http://benchrest.com/nielson/