What are your thoughts on using these bushing dies with brass that does NOT have a turned neck??

Thanks!

I've been slowly converting my die sets to include the Redding S dies where available. I have some 40 odd sets of dies and I'm about half way there now. I turn very few necks and have found the bushing dies to be quite an advantage. If your brass has neck walls that are uniform to within .0015" it won't matter whether you use a conventional sizing die or a bushing die. The results will be the same either way except with the bushing die you can control the amount of "grip" on the bullet. If the walls of necks are beyond that tolerance in thickness, again it won't matter. You need better brass. I use the S dies all the time with unturned necks and find them to be superb in enabling you to control yet another factor in a reload.

The greatest advantage of the bushing die is not OVERSIZING the neck. Adequate tension is usually achieved with a mere reduction of about .003 from loaded round neck diamension. Try them, you'll like them.

Just ordered my first set yesterday for my 300 Ultra. Question, do you need to lube the neck if using the titanium nitride neck bushings? I hope not, I got them to speed up loading by way of not spending so much time wiping lube off the inside case neck and outside body, not to mention not having to trim and chamfer so often either. Figure this will cut my time in half loading, and give longer life to the already handycapped at birth Remington brass, i.e. split necks and loose pockets.

I must say, out of sixty brass weighed and sorted in a 4.0gr spread with three different lots, I weighed them all with water for kicks and giggles to check internal capacity too. They had a wopping .4gr spread in internal capacity!!! Ya 4 tenths of a grain! I was shocked as I'm sure many would be, especially with the large initial 4.0gr spread in case wt.

I think my dies will get updated to the type S dies one by one too. I always hated the off center expander shaft in the regular Redding dies and left them loose so they centered up while sizing, don't have to worry about that with these dies no more.

I don't lube my necks for sizing in ANY die but having wiped them off with Kroil to remove carbon I'm sure there is a bit of lubrication. I don't use it in either type of bushing or in conventional dies.

The Redding folks do use the expander even with the bushing dies because as they explained to me, they feel that an expander irons out the inside of the neck for better uniformity of tension, and particularly where necks aren't turned. I don't turn my necks. They didn't convince me and I don't use an expander, but it's not what they recommend.

Bob 338, still not using the expander? Oh well. If you do not use the expander ball with cases that have not had the necks turned to a uniform thickness you will experience different bullet grip(neck tension) this is why the dies include an expander ball for those who wish to minimize working the brass but do not turn the necks. Where the different grip is noticed is when seating bullets, you will have bullets easier to seat than others, and isn`t handloading all about trying to get everything as uniform as possible? On the other hand if you have a tool like a 90* ball type micrometer to measure thickness and group these together you then have uniform brass that does not need turning, these work fine without the expander ball. Bob and myself had this same discussion months and months ago on another forum when a poster asked why was the expander ball was included in an s-type die set. I`m glad you confirmed what I recommended by way of Redding.

I only use the expander on new brass, It defeats the purpose of using the bushings after that. I do lightly lube the necks.

I understand the neck tension part, so if you don't turn them how about reaming them? I have a Forrester trimmer/ and turner but don't have a tight chamber and reaming would be faster too and accomplish the same objective true? The right size bushing and the reamer would cut them all to the same as the ones with the thinnest necks, true? Expanders suck, so anything to be rid of them is for me.

If your necks are reasonably close, like within .0015" I've never seen any difference in accuracy when you don't use an expander. In testing many, many rounds both turned and unturned, invariable those with the necks turned and with an expander did NOT give the best accuracy. I believe the reason was the added clearance caused by the turning of the necks. I also believe that the small amount of difference in neck tension of unturned necks matters little, particularly in a hunting weapon.

Neither use of an expander, nor neck turning has ever improved my accuracy that I've been able to note. Totally agree that the expander is counter productive as is the neck turning if the necks are reasonably uniform. I had this long discussion with Richard Beebe, head of Redding, at the Shot Show last year. He's a shooter and believes what Redding recommends is optimum and he does it himself, but he also recognized my opinion and view.

Brent, reaming will only uniform the ID of the brass and is used to rid excess thickness on multiple fired brass or when necking down several calibers that result in excessive thickness at the neck, you will still have inconsistent neck tension without outside turning, outside turning has a mandrel inserted in the case neck and a cutter that adjusts down to a predetermined distance from the mandrel and when you turn and the cutting is complete you have perfect uniform thickness in the neck. The only other way for you to eliminate the expander ball is as Bob338 does and mic your cases and group them together, this is a much easier way to have uniform brass although extra brass ordered on the front end is little cost for all the labor involved in turning necks.