...get into neck turning?

I would like to try and take a 1/2 inch rifle to a 1/3 inch rifle

Start with a tight necked rifle otherwise you are adding clearance where there is already a lot of clearance.
Most of my neck turning was done just out of curiosity. I have one of those goofy 38-55s with a .380 groove diameter. The chamber neck is .397 and will not accept .381 bullets seated in my brass. I turned some 30-30 brass and found it only required turning about 1/4" of the neck.

Here is an interesting article.1000 yards

cut .17 off the barrel

I have tried neck turning with zero improvement. Problem is, like already stated, that your chamber is already big and by turning your necks, you are making it effectively bigger. True, you are making your brass uniform, but your chamber can't take advantage of it. More likely, the brass will just lay in the bottom of the chamber and be more off center, not less. Start with a tight chamber and work from there. Or maybe yours will improve.

I've had some moderate success with neck turning. It does uniform your brass and enhance neck pull.
When you resize the 1x neck turned brass, if you will only resize half or so of the neck (enough to hold the bullet), then you end up with a bulge or donut around the neck at the shoulder of the case. When you chamber the loaded round, the donut will center the bullet in the leade. With careful bench technique, this will give you a measurable decrease in group size.

quote:

When you chamber the loaded round, the donut will center the bullet in the leade

I'm if the case is laying along the bottom of the chamber and is fired the neck expands to fill the chamber. It doesn't expand and center the brass. So the donut will likely be off center. While I agree it will likely make the neck a tigher fit how is it going to center the bullet to the bore?

Actually, as you pose the question and I try to think it through, you may be right. Assuming that you do not resize the body of the cartridge, the bullet should be nearly aligned with the center of the bore and it wouldn't make any difference whether you neck sized part way or down to the shoulder. But I have been doing partial neck sizing for so long, I doubt that I can change.
Why would the donut be off center?

If you have a tight necked chamber and turn the cases to match then you should also buy Redding bushing sizing die so that you can size the neck to the exact desired diameter.

I do that for a 6.5x284 and a 22.250 that I had custom chambers cut for and prepping new brass is a pain. But, they will shoot little bitty groups out to 1,000 yards.

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Originally posted by ramrod340:

quote:

When you chamber the loaded round, the donut will center the bullet in the leade

I'm if the case is laying along the bottom of the chamber and is fired the neck expands to fill the chamber. It doesn't expand and center the brass. So the donut will likely be off center. While I agree it will likely make the neck a tigher fit how is it going to center the bullet to the bore?

Paul, would it not center the bullet, if one only neck sized the case, and the neck was circumferentially uniform - that is, the neck had been turned. Such a cartridge should chamber with the bullet dead center relative to the bore...correct?? This also assumes that chamber is centered as well. AIU

I've hung around with BR and HiPower guys for about thirty years now.

I once asked the board at Precision Shooting about how to get a factory chamber rifle to go from 1" to 1/2". It was a M700 in 308 Win.

1. Use 30-06 NORMA brass cut back and necked down to 308 Win. Buy a hundred and weigh them.

2. Buy a ballhead tubing micrometer and measure the neck thickness variation. Just turn the casenecks to even them up. You should have fat neck cases, like .005-.007" thicker than factory 308.

3. Uniform the primer pockets inside and out. One cool thing about the NORMA brass is that the flashholes are drilled from the case mouth. Separate them into groups of ten, based on weight.

4. Buy an arbor press and dies with adjustable neck bushings. I like Neil Jones (CPS) because they come with a micrometer seating die head.
It lets you seat a bullet long, so it needs to be jammed home. Don't get carried away, just long enough to use the bolt to chamber the round. You blacken the bullets with a fat Sharpie. You should see four
grooves when you extract the bullet. The standard accuracy setting was to jump the bullet .020" into the rifling.

The "fat" casenecks cut clearance down from as much as .008" on a factory round, to .003-.004". They call it a "Tightneck Turkey".

It worked well enough for me to finish 7th overall in the country in 1989 after 19 TCL matches shot that year. They have a postal league. Guys just show up at a match and shoot. The top five scores get turned in for that club's month's score. I shot just well enough to make that top five at every match that year. The next year, Steve Kostanich built me a pure competition rifle on that 700. Lilja barrel, McMillan HBC stock, tight neck using 308 NORMA or DWM brass and Sierra Matchking 150gr bullets.

Note, Sierra uses three different point up final shaping dies, and they all get spit into one hopper. If you are willing to spend a few bucks at Sinclairs, they make a hex nut looking thingie that clamps to a digital caliper. It measures from the base of the bullet to the tip. Sierra's three point up dies measure .000", shortest, to + .005", medium, and +.014", longest. If you are jumping .020" with the short one, you are jumping .005" or .014" less with the other two. Two guys and I bought 10,000 of them at season's end, and spent days sorting them by oal. No length shot any more accurately, once you set the jump at .020".

Little stuff like that is what turn an average factory into a barn-burner.

quote:

Assuming that you do not resize the body of the cartridge, the bullet should be nearly aligned with the center of the bore and it wouldn't make any difference whether you neck sized part way or down to the shoulder. But I have been doing partial neck sizing for so long, I doubt that I can change.

I would say the key question is when a case is laying on the bottom of a chamber does the brass expand uniform and center the case or simply expand to fill the chamber leaving the bullet off center? What about a rifle with and ejector spring does the case no lay on the bottom or shoved to the side? Or a combination??
I'm half the country away from any data I have. I THOUGHT I have seen that the brass flowed to fill the case. With the neck being thicker on the upside of the neck. But it has been years since I worried about the neck etc.

If the brass flow is uniform and your decapper and die don't deform the donut then I can see that it might help center. Assuming the chamber is not too far out of round I would think that the non resized case would do more to center than the donut.

My norm is custom dies for all my wildcats and my chamber is cut to the brand of brass I'm going to use. Since 90% of what I shoot is 06(280) based and I bought a LOT of 280 Norma brass no big deal. For all other hunting rifles I simply set my fl die to just bump the shoulder.

If I was considering turning the necks it would only be in a tight neck chamber. I've simply never seen any real gain to a hunting rifle neck turning (uniforming) to fool with. For those of you that have and want to do it and feel it helps who am I to say not do it.

Anything that makes you more confident in your rifle and load are probably worth it.

I've heard recently that some of the benchrest shooters don't bother anymore with the tight neck chambers and neck turning - over rated.

I agree that it is a pretty pointless exercise to neck turn hunting ammo. Unless, of course, someone is a shop freak with a whole lot of time on their hands.

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Originally posted by Ackley Improved User:
I've heard recently that some of the benchrest shooters don't bother anymore with the tight neck chambers and neck turning - over rated.

Not true. On my BR chambers I have a reamer for chambering and one to build my full length dies. My sized fireformed brass fits my chamber. I turn my necks to be loaded at .0015" smaller that the reamed neck size. No such thing as perfect, but you do what you can.
I sure don't fool with this on a hunting rifle.