I jsut scored a set of 22-243 middlestead dies for 55.00. the last quote i got for them was about 119.00 from midway. That puts me that much closer to finally getting this rig out and doing some shooting. I have a few questions about preparing brass. I plan on using once fired Fed 243 brass as i have a good supply of it. I am wondering if i will need to turn the necks after sizing? I do not know what the neck size is. How do i measure it? what i was thinking of doing is making a dummy round loaded short so that the bullet is not touching the lands and see if it fits in the chamber. If it does not I will turn the neck down slightly and try again until it fits. If anyone knows of a better/easier way please let me know. I have already asked the gunsmith that built it but he got rid of the reamer shortly after he built the rifle a couple years ago.



I just realized i probably should have posted ths in the reloading section. posted duplicate there too.

The Middlested is supposed to have a .256 neck-BUT people can have reamers ground to any spec they want so the only way to know is to do a chamber cast. Once fired brass will work, but you are better off to start with virgin brass because you are reshaping the shoulder and moving some of it forward into the neck and even once fired brass is already "work hardend" to some extent. The easiest thing to do is to inside neck ream after sizing the brass the first time, that will eleminate any donut and when you then resize the case the neck will be the proper dimension provided you reamer was to "standard" specs.



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