I saw a post recommending this due to less $$ and longer brass life. It looked like a good idea. Has anyone else tried this? Are there any drawbacks to this technique?

I have tried this and found that you have to really watch your neck thickness as the necks gain thickness when swaged down.If your chamber has a tighter neck you may have to trim the necks before you neck down the brass.

264 Win Mag, 33 Win Mag, 7mm Win Mag 300 Win Mag all are in the same length area that you're talking about. But you should still heed what stubblejumper said about neck thickness.

Check out e bay. There is a guy that's selling pmc .257 wby brass really right. For search string type in "257 pmc". He's selling 150 brass for $49.00 which I'd say is really decent.
As for necking down I make .270 wby brass from remington 7mm wby brass which I guess is no longer available. I tried taking that 7mm straight down to .257 and it crushed the shoulder.
I think for all the headaches, worries about case capacity, worries about neck thickness, the above option is the best!!

I use 7mm Rem mag to make 270 Wby. Since there is only .007" differnce between the neck of these two, there is very little change in the neck thickness. The more you reduce the neck size, the greater increase in neck thickness. If I was going to resize to form 257 Wby, I would use 264 Win Mag brass for the above reason.

[ 08-18-2002, 21:10: Message edited by: David ]

Gentlemen

I did some experiment with necking down 7mm rem mag to 257 wby.

I used a three set redding dies and lubed well. It worked great, just watch that neck thickness. It your cases cruches anneal or adjust the die and make the forming in a 2-3 steps

Cheers
/ JOHAN

Hello

>I tried taking that 7mm straight down to .257 and it crushed the shoulder.<

I had same problem with necking .284 Winchester to 6mm. Ended up using a collet in a South Bend lathe to do the first neck reduction, then finished the job with the sizing die.

Tom

I have necked down 270 WBY brass (Norma)to 257 WBY with no problem.
same with Rem 7 mm brass.It will come out about .010 shorter in neck length but works well in my rifle.
I do turn the necks,just to true them up.so you are only cutting enough to make them round.

de burr the flash holes,and run a Sinclair primer pocket uniformer to clean them up even.

They shott just as good if not better then Norma brass.
Rem brass is harder,so you can fire it more times before the primers get loose .

Works for me ,Thanks to Big Stick.

This is the way I do it and works. Just take out the decapping pin assembly and back the die off about 2 turns. Size all of your cases, then turn the die down 1 turn, then screw down till it just barely chambers in your rifle. Really going down just one caliber is a snap. If you screw up a case just take out the decapping rod. Iv'e turned 30/06 cases into .22/250 cases just fooling around and its easy. I know about neck thickness, remember I was just fooling around. 308,7/08,243 all a snap if you get bored some night. Might learn something also.