Just got the Lyman Accutrimmer, and outside neck turning accessory. Main reason for this choice is that they include many collets and pilots with the units, and dont want 8 buck for every caliber I need. That is a sales approach I will reward.

I got it working well last night, probably only ruined a couple of well used cases as I practiced. How close to the shoulder transition radius do you cut? And for thinning, rather than just knocking off the thick sections of the neck to make it more uniform, would you make more than one pass taking a little at a time. I might want to take .003 from the wall thickness. Is this a bad idea?

Neck turning is like moly, if it were not a good idea in some aplications, it would not be so popular.

But for me, with my Forster trimmer based neck turning has not produced any better accuracy.

So for the past couple years, I have given up on neck turning.

The Rolls Royce is probably the Neilsen "Pumpkin". It not only will be consistent to .0001" easily, it will allow you to accurately make repeatable adjustments as small as about one 30-millionths of an inch. (As one firm's ad says, "Any neck turner can hold .0001"...It's WHICH .0001" that is important."...or words to that effect.)



That, however will be impossible to measure or prove unless you have measuring equipment that discriminates to that level, and only do your measuring in a room where the temperature is very carefully controlled and the room is dust free.



For most purposes, a K&M, Sinclair, or Marquart Precision is fully adequate.



To choose between those three, I would check to see which has the wider carbide blade and pick that one. The wider the cutting blade, the smoother the finish of the turned case neck. A narrow cutting blade can produce a neck which under close examination looks as if it had threads turned on it.



Alberta Canuck

I've had a Sinclair since they first started making them. I did have a Forester before, but sold it after buying the Sinclair. For large batches, I power up using a Lee shell holder, but for small quatities, I do it by hand. That expander mandrel is a necessity. I had much trouble before buying them. I do 22, 6mm, 7mm and 30 cal turning.
Don

If you need to turn large quantities of brass for high power match shooting, or high volume varmint hunting take a look at the Gracey powered unit. I use one for prepping mass quantities of .308 brass. Very uniform, very fast.
JCN

i use the lyman neck turner,its ok. One thing on my trimmer is the head that holds the case is not sitting straight in the body. This tends to let the neck area push to one side. But the pilot centers the case for the cutting, so i see no harm.

JCN that Gracy power unit sounds interesting. I've been using a Sinclair with a variable speed cordless drill. Once it's set up it is reasonably fast and was accurate to .0005 on the last batch of Norma 22-250 brass I turned.

I'll post a picture of the Gracey after I get done dancing in the streets today . It is at its best when you need to crank out 500 cases or so.
JCN

K&M is the best I've ever owned. The new Hornaday unit works good and is very inexpensive, but it won't get rid of the dreaded donut. The best advice I can give is sell any rifle that requires neck turning! I like reloading, but I'd rather eat a bug than turn case necks. It's just a proccess I hate doing.

Terry

Here is a picture of the Gracey Nuclear Powered case neck turner in .223. It has three cutters and makes smooth cuts without dilly-dallying around.



This case is just turned enough to even up the neck thickness, something that many milsurp cases can benefit from.