Must be my day to be a PITA...

If you have no change in neck tension your chamber is to small. You should get about 3 firings ish before shoulder bump is needed.

Reloads- Low pressure does not expand necks on firing. More so with slow burn rate powders & lignt for caliber bullets.

But if a tight neck chamber issue , the fired neck will not open. Not a common issue.

Test- fire some factory ammo. But measure the loaded rounds outside neck diameter, before and after firing. The fired OD should be larger by .002"

ADDED- *A loaded rounds NECK OD should not be larger in diameter then .253" to correctly fit a factory chamber.*

Now for the rest of your reloading try neck sizing. I recommend the RCBS neck die, second choice the Lee collet neck die. Work around with this technique and maybe drop the big money into a Forster or Redding bushing die.
I've tried them all and settled on the RCBS neck die. I'll use a RCBS body die every second loading.

71GTO said:

I posted earlier regarding bumping the shoulder on .223 brass and got some great responses, but I figured my new question was different enough that I didn't want to hijack my own post. It never fails to amaze me at the talent and professionalism on this forum!
I have put about 200- rounds of my reloaded Lapua brass through my new Axis II in 223 and have found that 98% of the fired brass has retained the same neck tension as it started with before shooting them. I honestly feel like I could just decap, clean and load them back up to shoot them without doing any other prep including shoulder bump or neck sizing. I am too new to reloading for a bolt gun to even know if this is a viable approach??? Has anyone else ever ran across this with a rifle before? Does it mean that the chamber in the Axis is that good. I'm talking 195 out of 200 that came out the chamber this way. BTW the case headspace on the new Lapua brass started off at 1.449" and came out at 1.452" as measured with a Hornady comparator. Thanks in advance for the help and I hope everyone is staying safe. Tom

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When you say same neck tension ,how are you measuring that ?

71GTO said:

I posted earlier regarding bumping the shoulder on .223 brass and got some great responses, but I figured my new question was different enough that I didn't want to hijack my own post. It never fails to amaze me at the talent and professionalism on this forum!
I have put about 200- rounds of my reloaded Lapua brass through my new Axis II in 223 and have found that 98% of the fired brass has retained the same neck tension as it started with before shooting them. I honestly feel like I could just decap, clean and load them back up to shoot them without doing any other prep including shoulder bump or neck sizing. I am too new to reloading for a bolt gun to even know if this is a viable approach??? Has anyone else ever ran across this with a rifle before? Does it mean that the chamber in the Axis is that good. I'm talking 195 out of 200 that came out the chamber this way. BTW the case headspace on the new Lapua brass started off at 1.449" and came out at 1.452" as measured with a Hornady comparator. Thanks in advance for the help and I hope everyone is staying safe. Tom

Click to expand...

If I were you, I would try decapping, cleaning and reloading if the neck tension is the same. I wouldn't worry about the chamber being too tight, etc. If the accuracy of the load is satisfactory with no excess pressure signs I wouldn't worry about the load being too light either.

IMHO, I’d be careful with that assumption regarding neck size. Hopefully, you have some way to measure. Some don’t like using calipers for such work, but I have a set of Starrett calipers that have fine tips and work pretty well for that job. Stay up at the upper part of the mouth.

You should also mic the ball expander on your F/L die which will also give you an idea of neck ID. I would imagine it will be around .223. Brass should spring back a bit, so you’re neck ID might be .222 after F/L. Mic your bullet diameter which should be .224 unless they are lead or maybe plated. You should have .002 interference fit aka neck tension. Whatever your actual measurements, you’ll want to keep that consistent for best accuracy.

Blackrock above makes a point about just neck sizing using a neck sizer die. Beware that brass hardens after a number of firings, and you may see some extraction issues crop up eventually. Then, you’ll need to F/L resize again. How many firings depends on the caliber and the heat. And, you can just neck size by backing out your die a bit further than you did to get the shoulder bump.

71GTO said:

I posted earlier regarding bumping the shoulder on .223 brass and got some great responses, but I figured my new question was different enough that I didn't want to hijack my own post. It never fails to amaze me at the talent and professionalism on this forum!
I have put about 200- rounds of my reloaded Lapua brass through my new Axis II in 223 and have found that 98% of the fired brass has retained the same neck tension as it started with before shooting them. I honestly feel like I could just decap, clean and load them back up to shoot them without doing any other prep including shoulder bump or neck sizing. I am too new to reloading for a bolt gun to even know if this is a viable approach??? Has anyone else ever ran across this with a rifle before? Does it mean that the chamber in the Axis is that good. I'm talking 195 out of 200 that came out the chamber this way. BTW the case headspace on the new Lapua brass started off at 1.449" and came out at 1.452" as measured with a Hornady comparator. Thanks in advance for the help and I hope everyone is staying safe. Tom

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Brass springs back after firing; but don't rely on that to be uniform.

Put a bullet in the case with no primer or powder. Push the tip against a piece of wood. How hard to you have to push it before it pushes in? Try the same test with one that has been resized - any difference? Assuming you are going to taper crimp it might be ok, but I would at least neck size it as it takes seconds to do so, why take a chance on having an issue?

5.56 Minimum pullet pull is 35 pounds. Military & Federal standard. This is equal to about .002" neck tension.

Measure the OD of neck before & after bullet seating. After seating, neck diameter should have increased by .002" minimum. Autos may need more NT.

Do yourself a favor and don't fall for the neck size only line of thinking.
Find what your chamber needs and resize to that.
I don't do the screw the die down all the way either.
Also don't skip steps. It's a bad idea.

I mainly asked my question to see if anyone else has seen this in their own rifle.

I'm running 24.4 grains of varget behind an 80 grain bullet in a savage in lapua brass and am not seeing that.

71GTO said:

...have found that 98% of the fired brass has retained the same neck tension as it started with before shooting them. I honestly feel like I could just decap, clean and load them back up to shoot them without doing any other prep including shoulder bump or neck sizing.

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Some of the custom die manufacturers want you to do just this and send them cases that have been fired at least three times and they use the well formed case to make a size die for the rifle. Often tight neck chambers with turned neck brass though. Most are loose enough you will loose neck tension upon firing, with any normal load.

Posted the video in your other thread but use your rifle as the go/no go gauge to set your die and you won’t have to worry about bumping things that don’t need to be bumped.