Hey Guys,

Ok here it is from the top. I bought a rem 700 243 and had my gunsmith accurize it and turn the chamber into a 243 AI. He said he took off about .080" from the chamber end of the original barrel to get me closer to the lands and all that good stuff.

I also bought some S series Redding dies with the bushings. My gun smith told me he was going to use his reamer to make the chamber if you will in the dies. Last night I neck sized some fire formed brass and I could not get my Forester press to be able to size the whole neck. It stops about .080" short of the top of the shoulder.

My questions are:

Is this normal and should I worry about it? To solve the problem it looks like I would need to take about .080" off the bottom of the die.

Question number 2 where the bushing stops on the neck there is a little ridge. Is this going to affect accuracy and should I trim this down with the neck turner?

Question number 3 since this is a factory barrel is it possible to have a tight neck chamber? I was told that if my chamber is not a tight neck I wouldn't have to neck turn. Would you agree with this? I would imagine that my gunsmith probably didn't touch the neck of the chamber and probably just ran the AI reamer in. Since he took .080" off the barrel he might of had to make the neck or throat area deeper but it would be the same as factory or slightly larger I would imagine.

Please give me your thoughts,

Thanks guys,

Nick

I guess I don't understand evry thing I know about what you are saying

In rechambering a number of 8mm-06s from 8mmx57mm there was a ring around the neck on fired cases from some rifles. These were created by the 8mm-06 reamer having a smaller neck diameter than the existing chamber neck diameter.

Sounds like you may have a similar situation. If that be the case neck triming or turning ain't going to do the trick. Unless you get serious constriction, neck to bullet, it is unlikely that bad things will befall you.

you also may want to take it back to that GUN SMITH and see what sage advice he has to offer. roger

Redding bushing dies don't size the whole neck. I usually back off the top of the sizing stem about 1/2 turn to let the bushing float a bit and size even less of the neck. The whole neck doesn't need to be sized to hold a bullet anyway.

If you have a factory chamber neck in that barrel it's probably oversized, and the lump on the bottom of the neck is from that. Whatever you do don't turn that down to match the sized part of the neck or you'll have necks coming off on firing because it'll be too thin. Maybe not on the first firing after turning, but sometime. And at the most inconvenient time too.

The beauty of the "Ackley" design was the ability of the user [owner] to shoot factory ammo in the "improved" chamber if problems arose and you lost the improved ammo or just ran out. To do this properly the barrel must be set back a minimum of .005 or so. Most gunsmiths set it back a full turn to keep the calibre designation in the original place and just deepen the chamber until there is a VERY snug fit on a new case and the gauges [go, no-go] show it to be correct headspace. The dies you have should [?] work ok at this point. Having no experience with the dies you have I would suggest [like the other gentleman said] contact the gunsmith who did the job initially and see what he says. You can try a NEW 243 case in the chamber. You should be able to chamber it but definitely "feel" the EMPTY case when you close the bolt. If it closes with no resastance I would be wary. Good luck with a very nice wildcat.

Aloha, Mark

Thanks for your feedback. I actually got it figured out. The ring on the neck is formed after I run it through the neck sizing die. I will just leave it alone. If anything it will help with centering the bullet in the chamber.