I am thinking of getting some bushing dies for my .243.

my set up at present, using a standard redding die leaves me with a .272 outside neck diameter on a loaded un-neck turned case. a prepped case un loaded measures in the region of .269 - .270.

do i need bushing dies? this prepped case measurement seems to be what i would want to achieve with the bushing die.

what do you guys reckon?

my gut feeling tells me to keep as is and don't waste the money, but i will give neck turning a go soon so maybe i will need bushing dies?

assuming your reloading for a bolt action, I like the way I can choose how much of the neck to resize. You can also play around with neck tension. If reloading for the AR or encore/contender stick with the fulllenght dies.

There is nothing in your post, which tells that you either need or do not need bushing dies. You establish that your current (FL - I presume) die gives you about .002 - .003" worth of neck tension. That is a pretty reasonable value, which will allow you to live with a certain amount of variation in the brass. In fact, if that neck tension works for you, that might be the value you would aim to get with a bushing die as well.

The busing dies primarily provide you with a couple advantages: 1) they allow you to play with neck tension to see what works best - although you may end up with the same tension your standard die provided. 2) they allow you to size without an expander, a device which often creates a lot of runout in your sized cases. In addition to that, the bushing dies work your brass slightly less than a conventional die, but this may not be a concern to you.

If you decide to neck turn, you will need to use a die which will give you sufficient tension with turned necks. Depending on how much you want to turn, this could mean the use of a bushing die. Do note, however, that turning for a (normally oversized) factory chamber is generally considered a questionable exercise, and will certainly lead to brass being worked harder. If turning for a factory chamber, don't do more than a skim turn, in which the primary objective is to make the brass necks uniform, as opposed to reducing neck wall thickness.

- mike

Been there, done that and went back to Lee/RCBS

IMHO if you have a bald eagle rest on a concrete bench with talced bags, no sling swivel studs, 24x power scope or higher, wind flags and shoot match bullets from something heavy enough to shoot 'free' then you might be aable to get some benefit after some exhaustive testing.

Otherwise your results are likely to be inconsequential compared to the other variables. I found I couldn't get any difference with because my set up was allready operating at it's limit (read plastic rest, car bonnet, too heavy cross hair, no wind flags, varmint bullets and most importantly impatient shooter)

What MHO said...