Preping Brass

[Old Dog Man]

The process that I've settled on when reloading new rifle cases is as follows. #1 find shortest case, lightly trim it then trim all others to same length. #2 de-burr inside case neck just enough to remove burr and have a slight taper to help bullet start in case, remove outside neck burr only enought to remove burr. I don't want a big taper on outside of neck giving a starting point for gas blow back around neck. #3 remove burrs from inside flash hole just enough to remove burrs. #4 uniform primer pocket depth so all primers are seated the same by removing the small radius from the bottom of pocket, this step has shown to make more improvement in accuracy than anyother single thing I've done. I've turned outside neck and found in standard chambers it's a waste of time, unless you have a tight under size necked chamber like bench and target guns. I neck size using the Lee collet die, it forms the neck to a floating pin and you don't have to pull a sizing plug back through the neck, mine gives me .002" under bullet dia.. What I try to do is have a consistant case to start with, and I only use Win. brass. Everyone probably has their favorite brass. Al

 

[Muddydogs]

Why find shortest case, trim it lightly then trim all the others to the same length. Why not just trim all cases to minumum case length? I don't want to find a .005" under min case length case, trim it shorter then trim all my cases short. If there are a couple cases under min they get pulled to be used as plinking loads.

 

[chrome_austex]

Hopefully, this is all after resizing the cases!

I'm with Mud-dog on case length. I'd like them all to be metric than to match some arbitrary short straw.

That's interesting about uniforming primer pockets. I may have to try that some time.

The only other thing that I do is sort cases by weight, throwing about 5-10% of the highest and lowest weight cases aside for plinking duty or the recycle bin if they're suspicious.

 

[Jdillon]

I do all of the above and neck turn my brass as well to a achieve a consistent thickness. This typically involves removing a small amount and has reduced runout as well as providing consistent neck tension.

 

[RedHeadHunter]

I find it interesting that you have found that uniforming the primer pocket gives you the biggest advantage. In my experience, I have found very little improvement in accuracy from uniforming the primer pocket, but I use a uniformer on a drill for all my primer pockets. The step I have found to produce the largest advantage is neck turning. I have found most brands of brass has individual pieces with large differences in wall thicknesses. Once I started neck turning, those pesky flyers suddenly disappeared. As far as weighing the cases, I have found it more useful to measure the internal volume which is what you are trying to do by weighing the case. A slight difference in the extractor grove could make a big difference in the weight with out changing the internal or external dimensions of the brass. On some of the brass that require a lot of forming (7.62x39 to 6mm PPC for example) I anneal the neck and shoulder. This makes all the cases have a consistent neck tension. It also makes the brass last longer which is a great thing if you put a lot of work into your cases.

(might have to re-investigate the primer pocket issue)

Just my two cents!