I am shooting a custon built 22/6mm. Can I just reload brass without resizing? How much should the difference measure between the fired brass and the loaded brass. I think I remember it being. .003....

thanks
224TTH

probably not - check a fired case and see if it will hold a bullet or not. if it will go to it

Even if the bullet does not just drop through the neck, you will have no control over neck tension, hence no control over start pressure, bullet release, concentricity, etc. etc.....

I have never seen a chmaber so tight as to allow a bullet to be seated in a fired case w/o at least neck sizeing.

For proper neck tension the rule of thumb is the inter ID should be 0.003" less then bullet diameter. The neck has to expand to release the bullet it will not IMO shrink back to that smaller diameter on its own after fireing.

I fail to see how you can load without at least sizing a portion of the neck. When I was shooting BP with cast bullets, I only sized a portion of the neck - about 1/2 of the depth I wanted to seat the bullet as I recall. However, I could also control to some extent, the bullet diameter.
You're gonna have to at least size the neck.
Bear in Fairbanks

quote:

Originally posted by fredj338:
I have never seen a chmaber so tight as to allow a bullet to be seated in a fired case w/o at least neck sizeing.

They exist - primarily for BR application. It is called a "fitted" neck, and used to be more popular in days past. These days, most BR shooters size to control neck tension - apparently VV N133 (the most popular powder for 6PPC) likes quite a bit of tension.

As stated above, if an unsized case will hold a bullet without sizing, in principle you can fire it without sizing. This, however, is unlikely to be the case if the fired neck is .003" over loaded neck diameter. A chamber neck .003" over loaded neck diameter is on the mid- to high-end of a "tight" (as opposed to fitted) chamber, and would be a normal choice for a tight (no turn) chamber.

In any event, eventually, you'll most likely have to bump the case shoulders to be able to chamber reloaded cases.

- mike

Here is a link to a site that tells you how to make "fitted" brass.

http://www.varmintal.com/arelo.htm

The info is about 1/4 the way down the page. It starts with the paragraph titled neck turning for custom-chambered rifles and ends with fitted neck cases.
Varmint Al's site is full of interesting ideas and opinions on the subject of reloading. Lots of other information here too.
Read his bio also.

muck

I measured the fired cases last night...they average .221 inside the neck.

The outside of the fired cases averaged less than .002 larger than the loaded cases.

just more info for everyone to think about

thanks
224TTH

Turning necks for a fitted neck was a PITA, and had to be done just so, but you still had to allow room for bullet release. I never met anyone that was just popping a new bullet in a totally untouched case. You'd have concentricity problems at the very least, since in those days we were not jam seating.

amamnn, I'm not sure why you say there will be concentricity problems. I would have said it would reduce concentricity problems because the case is now fully fire-formed. Perhaps you are thinking of different conditions to mine. I have a workmate who claims he got very tight groups with a single shot 270 target rifle and that he did not resize - he says the necks were tight enough to re-insert a bullet by hand - tight enough that they stayed in place. Is he speaking with forked tongue? Who knows! I do a different trick in that I seat the bullet in a paper cup (which I then 'glue' with molten waxy-lube). I have measured runout in a lathe and found it to be unmeasurable. But, with the powder I am using I needed to develope of load that would burn it consistantly. I have tried the same thing with my 303 Brit and although I got similar accuracy to the 'normal' way, I would have to single load or the bullets will get dislodged with recoil. It does make a difference to POI but not to pressure signs and felt recoil and report. So I gave it up as a bad job!

Another aspect is that some cases might spring back more than others. I get this with my 303-25. Some case necks are tight enough to reseat but usually give a snug fit, loose enough to insert and pull out by hand.

224TTH:

Generally, if a fired case will not accept a bullet with at least a slip fit, then the case neck is considered too thick for proper function (and old wives will tell you tales of vastly incresed pressures from such loads).

You apparently have a very tight neck in your custom chamber, as is appropriate to a custom chamber. I suspect you will find that different lots of brass will give you varying inside neck diameters in the fired cases.

However, if the lot of cases you are using is VERY CONSISTENT, and your bolt closes on a loaded round without significant resistance, AND your reloaded rounds in unsized necks have sufficient tension to hold the bullet in place, then you may very well be able to make successful and accurate reloads in unfired cases. There are a lot of "ifs" here, and it would be unusual to meet all of them.

You will likely need to turn your necks to reduce their thickness slightly, then resize.

The neck has to expand to release the bullet it will not IMO shrink back to that smaller diameter on its own after fireing. Au contrair: There is always some springback with an expanded metal. Brass springs back less than most steels, but a few one-thousandths of springback is normal.

quote:

Originally posted by mho:
They exist - primarily for BR application. It is called a "fitted" neck, and used to be more popular in days past. These days, most BR shooters size to control neck tension - apparently VV N133 (the most popular powder for 6PPC) likes quite a bit of tension.
- mike

I'm sure they do exist, I have just never seen one.

I have a Ron Pence built 17IV this gun is a fitted neck and all I have to do is knock out the primer, put in a new one add powder and seat the bullet. It is all in the neck tention and you have to start with a tight neck chambering. Most "Benchrest" 6PPC's will have a neck of .262" Std Lapua brass has a neck wall thickness of aeound .014" If we double that measurement because brass is on both sides of the bullet that gives us .028" add .243" and at .271" it will not chamber. Now comes the hard part you have to outside neck turn AND probubly inside neck ream aprox. .0095" when you get it right they shoot but look out for brass to flow to the neck and then presures build up and they don't shoot & could blow up! I will only owen this one but I am not a fan of neck turning.

Another issue you may want to check from time to time is the formation of the "doughnut".

Don't know if yours will do it, but my TTH did. It is a constriction at the base of the neck (at the juncture of the shoulder) that you can feel if you shove a longer bullet into the unsized neck. Some of my fired cases I can just slide a new bullet into with hand pressure. The bullet slides down until the base of the bullet hits the neck/shoulder junction and then would stop.

Had to ream it out with the small inside reamer, although I did "bubba" some with a round file. Can't tell the difference

Jim

quote:

Another aspect is that some cases might spring back more than others.

I dug out some berdan primed cases yesterday - these are PMP with normal sized primers. The primers show a healthy pressure but there is no visible sign of having being fired on the case itself. There is no expansion ring and the shoulder has not moved forward. The expander plug visibly expands the neck. I annealed one of these and expanded it out to .425 with a plug I made, without splitting. (I have this future 303-40 wildcat project up my sleave).

quote:

Originally posted by mho:


They exist - primarily for BR application. It is called a "fitted" neck, and used to be more popular in days past. These days, most BR shooters size to control neck tension - apparently VV N133 (the most popular powder for 6PPC) likes quite a bit of tension.

- mike

In our part of the country they call it "O Tolerance" and they were done on the old Sako Russian cases long before Laupa/N-133. Don't hold me to this but they had maybe a .260/.258 neck big problem was always having to watch neck thickness/pressure. I was just starting out back then in BR some top guys in area were doing it I just didn't buy into that deal and I think it was the mid 80's didn't hear too much about it.