I'm not sure how many have done woodworking in their life. Building furniture was the easy part. The hardest most difficult part of wooodworking to learn to fix your mistakes and hide them where no one could tell.

If I purchase one of the Case Guage tools that abound by different manufacturers AND the bullet is out of concentricity...as some say by greater than .003...Can you go back to the drawing board and recenter the bullet so IT IS within tolerance? Do you have to remove the bullet and reseat it?

THanks for everyone's help.

RenegadeRN

Yep, easy as pie. I straighten loaded rounds all of the time.

1st off, if it is really out of line (around.01+), you need to track down where in your loading technique this much run-out was caused. If you try and straighten really out of line rounds, you will loose some neck tension.

After I seat every bullet (And light crimp with a LFC die), I roll each round on a gauge. If the round is out of line I mark the high spot with a pen. Then, I place a piece of trash brass over the bullet down to the case mouth and apply a small amount of pressure and roll it on the gauge again. You can also do this with a hole of proper size drilled in a hard wood block.

This will take you a bit to get a feel for it but, Once you get the hang of it, it goes by very quickly. I've straightened 1000s of rounds. This WILL reduce your group size with a given load.

I try for less than .002 with load development rounds and target rounds and less than .003 for hunting rounds depending on the rifle and it's accuracy potential. The more accurate the rifle the more anal I am to try and squeeze every last bit of perfection.

I proved the bad effects of run out before I ever owned a concentricity gauge. What got me onto it? I purchased a Target rifle that would shoot well below MOA but during a range session I'd have a couple of groups in the 1" range with the same batch of loads. It was a head scratcher and I was convinced I need to just try different combos but, the accuracy and velocity consistency of just a couple of combos kept me coming back to them. I decided I had to find the culprit in my loading procedure and one day I rolled some of the rounds on the table and saw an ever so slight "wobble" to a couple of the rounds. I got in the kicthen and rolled that batch of ammo across the counter and seperated them by those that had a slight visible wobble to those that didn't and bingo I found my flyer problem when I tested each (the staright vs the wobblers )

As soon as I found that problem I tried it in a couple other rifles and was convinced it was a large factor and immediately ordered a concentricity gauge. Before then, I never really thought run-out would be a cause for irratic grouping with given accuracy loads in different rifles. I was wrong.

Hope that helps


Reloader

It`s best to find the cause of the runout if possible. A case neck that is thicker on one side won`t hold a bullet concentric to the axis of the cartridge. If the expander pulls the neck to one side when exiting, good things won`t happen either. Reloading is like anything else, doing it right the first time is always best.

I used to run every cartridge through my RCBS gage until I found bullets that had always grouped .5" for 5 rds from my M70 HV in 223 had 0.005-0.007" runout and working on them to get it lower didn`t seem to improve things any @ 1-200 yds. A quick check of the average of a few groups with my 708 showed the same result. I may just not be qualified to find the change in performance but it seemed that worrying about the last couple thousanths runout wasn`t productive IMO.
I still check it occasionally but I don`t fret if it isn`t perfect.

I'll also add your dies will have a major effect on the amount of run-out produced.

I have the least run-out with Forester BR dies and Lee Collet Dies.

I would not advise a newbie to try the Collet dies out. They take alittle getting used to to get proper and consistent neck tension. I usually run my brass through a Redding Body die and then a Lee Collet die. Produces some very straight rounds.

The most run-out I get is from some of the cheaper FL dies. However some FL dies will load some darn straight loads.

Seating the bullet in 1/3s helps as well, seat a 1/3 turn a 1/3.......

Good Luck

Reloader

Everyone has been helpful. Thank you. This adds to my already growing knowledge of reloading.

RenegadeRN

Once the bullet is loaded there are only 3 methods I know of to change it

• Reloader's method
  
• The Bersin Tool
  
• Or with a bullet puller discussed here

The trick is to use the concentricity gauge to find ways to minimize runout during the case prep and bullet seating processes.

quote:

Originally posted by woods:
Once the bullet is loaded there are only 3 methods I know of to change it...

Hey RenegadeRN, It is so good to see the enthusiasm you have in your questions. Your curosity will serve you well in Reloading.

In addition to Woods List, there is one other thing you can do - P-FLR and forget about the concentricity. The nice thing about it is you can do it with any regular old Full Length Die Set and you can compare the results to all the other Methods you want to try.

You can find out How to P-FLR at that Link. And you really should be using the never improved upon Creighton Audette Load Development Method to find the best Barrel Harmonic.

The best thing about all of this, is you can try it and see how well it works "compared to" all the other stuff that drives folks crazy.

Best of luck to you.

Here's what I copy when people are asking how to improve runnout with their fl dies. It's helped all of mine and my friends to make straighter loaded rounds:

My $.02 worth---ALL dies with expander balls need tuning. Think about it...a piece of typing paper is .003" thick--what are the odds that the expander is not PERFECTLY centered in a die and could pull a case slightly off center??? Pretty good I'd say. Pull the expander stem out of the die (and now is a good time to clean the inside of the die). Run about 5 brass into the die and see if they come out concentric. If they do (and usually they will) you now have to try and get that stem centered on re-assembly. A great way that helps is to put a piece of very concentric brass up into the die to hold the stem in place as you tighten it down. Sometimes this takes 2 people unless you have 3 or 4 hands. AFter reassembly try sizing some brass and check runnout. If not good then do very small turns of the expander stem--probably 1/32 of a turn at a time. Resize some brass and repeat the small turns. At some point I can almost guarantee that you will get GREAT RUNNOUT CONSISTANTLY. (Somehow, someway the expander spindle will hit almost perfect centering in the die body) I have many dies that consistantly make less than .002" runnout after sizing with most of the brass at .001" and less. I own, hornady, redding, forester, rcbs, and lee dies. ALL OF THEM HAVE BEEN TUNED and most make fantastic ammo and all make good ammo!! I have never ever got a set of dies from any factory that made as good of ammo as those that I have done this simple work with.