El Rojo
May 1, 2003, 12:34 AM
Hey yall,
I went out to load up some Hornady 110 gr. V-max for the .308 today on the RL 550B. I did some massive brass processing a while back by cleaning,depriming, trimming to 2.000 with a RT 1200, and then cleaning again on some FC brass. When I went to start reloading today, that flat based 110 gr. V-max didn't want to go into the brass correctly and I ended up screwing up the neck on the round and it wouldn't seat easy at all. So I measured the mouth radius and it was a mere .298-.300. Not .308! So I went ahead and neck sized a few rounds, but left my size die for the trimmer on station three where I usually have it. I check a few rounds and they were back to roughly .308. Then I checked some finished rounds, and they were back to .298-.300 range again! I soon figured out since the RT 1200 trim die was still screwed in, that it was actually compressing the neck and making the opening smaller. I unscrewed it and then processed the brass with a super quick neck size and things worked out fine.
So a note of caution, if you are going to trim with the RT 1200, be aware it might bring your neck deminsion down below .308. I have found that this is not a big deal when loading boat tails, as the boat tail slides the round right on in there. However with flat bases, forget it, you are going to end up ruining a whole lot of brass. So if you do use the RT 1200 (which I recommend, it is a real time saver), you might want to check and see if you have to go back and give them a quick neck size again to get the opening to .308. If you are reloading exclusively boat tails, you might be able to get a way without having to re-neck em.
Hope this info helps.
I went out to load up some Hornady 110 gr. V-max for the .308 today on the RL 550B. I did some massive brass processing a while back by cleaning,depriming, trimming to 2.000 with a RT 1200, and then cleaning again on some FC brass. When I went to start reloading today, that flat based 110 gr. V-max didn't want to go into the brass correctly and I ended up screwing up the neck on the round and it wouldn't seat easy at all. So I measured the mouth radius and it was a mere .298-.300. Not .308! So I went ahead and neck sized a few rounds, but left my size die for the trimmer on station three where I usually have it. I check a few rounds and they were back to roughly .308. Then I checked some finished rounds, and they were back to .298-.300 range again! I soon figured out since the RT 1200 trim die was still screwed in, that it was actually compressing the neck and making the opening smaller. I unscrewed it and then processed the brass with a super quick neck size and things worked out fine.
So a note of caution, if you are going to trim with the RT 1200, be aware it might bring your neck deminsion down below .308. I have found that this is not a big deal when loading boat tails, as the boat tail slides the round right on in there. However with flat bases, forget it, you are going to end up ruining a whole lot of brass. So if you do use the RT 1200 (which I recommend, it is a real time saver), you might want to check and see if you have to go back and give them a quick neck size again to get the opening to .308. If you are reloading exclusively boat tails, you might be able to get a way without having to re-neck em.
Hope this info helps.