Reforming Brass

[JohnH]

On another thread about annealing, several responses included concerns about neck thicness, so I ran some testing that I was going to do but hadn't yet. I reformed a batch of 10 Winchester 30-06 cases to 25-06, I then resized once fired Remington and Frontier 25-06 cases, and resized a reformed Winchester case that had been fired at approximately 50,000 psi according to the book 3 times, and then reformed a once fired Remington 30-06 case and measured the neck wall thickness. I did this by gaging the inside neck diameter with a small bore gage, measuring the outside of the neck with a mic, subtract the ID measure from the OD measure and divide by two. This method will not reveal where a neck may be thicker in one area than another. The results follow...

Newly reformed Winchester 30-06 cases have a consistant wall thickness of .0135

The once fired Remington 25-06 case measured .012

The once fired Frontier 25-06 measured .013

The 3x fired reformed Winchester case measured .013

The reformed once fired 30-06 Remington case measured .0135

This testing is very limited, but only reveals a .0015 difference between reformed and factory 25-06 cases. Obviously different lots may and will give diferent measurements, but it is interesting to note that the once fired 30-06 Remington case is one I picked up on a range about a year ago. What I see is that the brass is surprisingly consistant.

The rifle is doing just fine with the reformed cases, no excess pressure signs on the brass or on opening, I am reluctant to consider neck turning at this point, it could well be that the extra .0015" is helping rather than hurting, but one thing is certain, only measuring can tell what is happening to the brass, best not to leave things to an assumption.

[powderburnerr]

You cannot reform brass . the durn stuff has made its bed in holding all them pb projectiles and will not change
actually if the chamber cast you made shows you have enough room to fit the reformed brass and still have room for expansion to release the bullet you are all right . on the other hand if the necks show a propencity to be too thick , at this time you have yto look at neck trimming to prevent high pressures......Dean

[Bullshop]

In my experiance with the 25/06 and reformed brass from 30/06 the necks will continualy thicken with each shot especialy if pressure is near the top end.
Dont assume that because there is no problem with your newly formed brass that there wont be at some number of firings down the road.
If you expect long case life I reiterate that you will need some way to maintane neck thickness. This will be true even if you just use factory 25/06.
The two cases that have given me the most problems with neck wall thickening are the 25/06 and the 220 swift.
Your call but mark my words if you keep and shoot this rifle for some time you will learn this on your own!
BTW same goes for case length, watch it closly!
BIC/BS

[arkypete]

Not sure if this will help. First off I buy my 25-06 brass in boxes of 100. I size everything, trim every thing to length, load and fire them. All cases are sized, checked for length and neck turned, primer pockets are uniformed and flash hole deburred. From that point on cases are checked for length at each loading but I've never had any thickening of neck wall. This is Remington brass.
When I make of cases for my 375 Whelen I do the expanding, trimming, loading firing, then follow the above proceedure. This is a cast bullet rifle, so fire forming bullets are real cheap,
I use the same proceedure for my 30-06.
Jim