Thats the plan Kranky. Just very disappointed how nonuniform this brass is.

way I see it,...006" thickness variance directly equates to high runout numbers.

I take a fireformed, straight case,..and set the die with it. Run it up into the die without it being locked down,..then lock the ring. That makes the die body concentric with a straight case and the threads are now seated correctly. Now,..on the down stroke, when the mandral goes back into the neck on it's way out,..tighten the decapping stem while it is in the neck. That assures a concentric stem fit. The die is now as straight as it can be. Whatever runout is left has to be fireformed out. I find unfired new brass to be quite full of runout.

Not sure what kind of machine they use at Rem for the "final wash and spin" but from the last few batches I got from them it looks like they must throw in some 6" rocks to make sure everything stays mixed up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes savage, alot of things going on here that are dependent on each other. First off, my end goal is bullet runout less than .003". Tp attempt to reach this goal, I did several things that led to another and another.

Three main things here
Varying Neck thickness
Neck Runout
Bullet Runout

New brass, bad varying neck thickness. With this varying neck thickness, you get bad bullet runout. Answer, was to turn necks. First off I thought my neck turning was causing "NECK" runout issues, but I measured the neck runout on the virgin brass last night, and its back from the start. Neck Turning didn't make it worse. After turning, I thought FL dies would make my other problem, (neck runout), better, which in turn affects my bullet runout. It helped but not all the way. Sinclair and others said got to fireform. Which I found out yesterday is the only way.

Then I wanted to know how to fireform without a bullet. But several warned against the cream of wheat, dacron, cotton, etc.

Thanks to all replyed but I think I found my answer. But I can't believe how crappy this brass is. Out of 150 cases (new), 40% are dinged up bad around the body and neck. So I compared this to Federal brass without these crazy issues.

I've never heard of quite that version of it, but then again I've seen some odd stuff come from Barsness's articles. Whatever works for him, I guess.

More or less the same idea, you can loosen up your decapper stem, run the case up, then start to lower the ram until you just begin to feel the neck touch the expander ball, and then tighten down the decapper stem (keeping a smidge of tension on w/ the case while you do it). Should be pretty well centered now.

Other 'improvements' include getting a carbide expander ball for Redding dies; they 'float' on the decapper stem and don't force the neck to one side or the other. Other dies have the expander much higher up so that it's doing its work when the case is still supported better by the die, or have the taper of the expander so you can get a more gradual expansion instead of a sudden hump.

Some people treat expander balls like the spawn of Satan, opting to not use them at all. For one reason or another, my cases get dinged up, either during shooting (AR or bolt action match rifle during rapid fire strings), dropped of the shooting or loading benches, etc. so I usually opt to keep some sort of expander in the loop.

YMMV,

Monte