Newbie questions on Brass and brass prep

[TheFlynn01]

Howdy all, had a newbie question on brass, and brass preparation: Is it worth uniforming flash holes? What difference does that make over all? I have seen lyman has a tool for it and was curious about it.

The second question: Neck sizing, does it really prolong the life of brass and increase accuracy from that given rifle? After you neck size do you continue to do so for the life of brass, or should you full length after a set amount of firings to get it back into spec?

[414gates]

Everyone has their own opinion on this. You need to decide what works for you.


Is it worth uniforming flash holes?

No. Leave them alone for best accuracy.


...Neck sizing, does it really prolong the life of brass and increase accuracy from that given rifle?

It may, depending on the caliber, and how hot things are loaded.

Generally, annealing is what increases case life. It's less to remember if you anneal after every firing, no losing track of how many firings.

There is no evidence to support that neck sizing only increases accuracy. If neck sizing only has increased accuracy, you may have a bigger problem that need fixing.

Setting the correct shoulder bump gets you closer to better accuracy than neck sizing only.


After you neck size do you continue to do so for the life of brass, or should you full length after a set amount of firings to get it back into spec?

You should not neck size. Set the shoulder back the correct amount after each firing. Lots of good Youtube videos on this, such as posted by Erik Cortina.

[Three44s]

Belated welcome to “Boolits”

I believe I get better powder burn by inside flash hole deburring. There for I do all my metallic casings. I do see groups shrink with varmint cartridges.

If you have a gun you can neck size for, then I recommend it. You will have to full length or partial full size periodically because the casings will conform to the chamber it’s fired within more closely upon each cycle.

Three44s

[Smoke4320]

If you are a blaster only dont bother
If you are a longer range hunter or accuracy buff absolutely debur/uniform inside and outside of flash holes
Annealing will increase case life. Neck sizing will depend on the rifle. Most times it will help

[Gator 45/70]

Might help with a few more details like what brass are we loading and caliber.
Welcome btw.

[M-Tecs]

All the answers to those questions are dependent on application and need.

Uniforming flash holes has benefits for benchrest shooting and long-range shooting past 600 yards. For most other applications you will not notice an accuracy improvement. I do not flash hole uniform for my prairie dog rifles simply because the benefit verse time ratio is not there to justify doing 6,000 plus cases. On the ones that I have installed Krieger barrels on I consistently hold sub 1/2 MOA for 10 shot groups without flash hole uniforming. For F-Class 600 and 1,000 I uniform the flash holes.

Neck sizing only has fallen out of favor somewhat for the accuracy crowd but it still has some applications. The benchrest and long range competitors currently tend to use minimal should bump with very light body size with a neck anneal. They tend to use custom dies specific to their chamber. That is for the high pressure rifle cartridges. For lower pressure cast loads lots still just neck size. Depending on the cartridge and pressure you may start to get hard bolt closing so a full length size may be required at some point.

[TheFlynn01]

Hmm fair enough, I am shooting 303 british, and have heard they are pretty good at stressing out brass and eating through it. So I have heard, in turn, that neck sizing is the way to go to get more firings out of the cases. I wanted to see if that was true. As some of the stuff I have read online seem to point out that the results and uses of neck-vs full length resizing are negligible. So, I figured I would bug you all and find out, what is what.

As for the flash hole uniforming, I just thought it was a neat tool, but wondered how useful it would be. For my applications? Not at all it would seem haha.

Thank you for the warm greetings!

[Smoke4320]

Honestly .. for 303 I would not waste my time uniforming .. but you do you
welcome to the board by the way

[nicholst55]

For the Lee Enfield rifles, I recommend neck sizing after the initial firing. When you say flash hole uniforming, are you speaking of deburring the flash hole on the inside, reaming the actual flash holes of a lot of brass to a uniform diameter, or uniforming the entire primer pocket? Deburring the flash hole is useful, but not mandatory. Uniforming the primer pocket is primarily useful for either benchrest or long range accuracy. It typically only needs to be done once, and at best it doesn't hurt anything. Uniforming the diameter of the flash holes - IMHO - is akin to counting the angels dancing on the head of a pin.

[.429&H110]

All I know, I learned here. The kid who set me up with reloading lessons was into max-loading .44 mag.

After I unload a new to me Federal brass, I gently remove a small brass turning that federal left there when they drilled the pilot hole. I don't know if it matters, it doesn't belong there, once gone, it's gone. The empty primer pocket should be clean enough to seat a primer. Before I knew better, I was stretching primer pockets with silly loads, so I got a primer pocket uniformer to squash the pockets back down round. I can skip that step now by shooting normal loads. I haven't separated a case yet, and I stopped trying to. My SRH thanks me.

This forum once had a long discussion about why we do not make flash holes bigger.
This forum's search feature is an amazing education.

[higgins]

For .303, get a few pieces of brass that will not chamber in your rifle or are a tight fit. Turn your FL die down until the sized case will chamber with minimal resistance. The trick it to not oversize the brass, but rather move the shoulder back just far enough to allow chambering. It's a matter of developing a feel for how properly sized brass feels when you close the bolt.

[Winger Ed.]

Being a military rifle, they are known for having chambers that can be on the generous side of their specifications.
Full length sizing every time probably will over work the cases causing splits and seperations.

If your brass isn't lasting very long, I'd check into annealing it first off, and neck sizing it a few times
until it doesn't want to chamber back up very well. Then move the sizer die down a little at a time
until it does. I'd take out the expander ball after the neck had been sized once.
Repeated passes will probably work harden and split the neck on you test case.

I deburr and clean out the flash holes because I'm not in a hurry to process a batch, and have plenty of time to do it.
Also, it leaves one less variable for me to blame for a poor group.

[lightman]

I uniform primer pockets and de-bur the flash holes on all of my rifle brass. Even my blasting/plinking ammo. I have seen very little to no increase in brass life because of neck sizing. Most of my brass failures are loose primer pockets or neck splits. Neither of these are addressed by neck sizing. I have several Redding Deluxe die sets that include a neck die and most of the neck dies are mostly unused. I've tried neck sizing for some very accurate Varmint rifles and saw very little if any increase in accuracy. However, I do neck size for a few rifles with tight necks. I use a bushing die on those.

[gwpercle]

When I started getting ready to reload for my 303 Enfield I was all prepared to encounter over sized chambers , necks , throats and a bore needing .314" boolits . It had sat unmolested since 1967 .
Got the factory military stock refinished and started measuring things .
.303" bore + .004" land + .004" land = .311" + .001" = .312" boolit diameter ...wait a minuite maybe I don't need that .314" Lyman Mould that can't be found .
Throat was not excessive either ...that's cool ! The Lee .312" would work .
And the chamber isn't oversize ... it isn't a match chamber but has the normal expansion you see in a sporting rifle .
I got this in 1967 for $30.00 at Army Navy Surplus store , Steinberg's ... it was owned by the Lipsey family who now operate Lipsey's in Baton Rouge .
It is a No 4 MKI 1942 B No 490 , manufactured at the Birmingham Small Arms plant ( BSA ) and doesn't appear to have seen any hard use ... looks like guard duty ... the rifle is well made and even has a nice finish . Maybe BSA turned out fewer but better made rifles than some of the other plants .

Anyway this tale is to say check your rifles dimensions and check the head space ... if you get lucky , like I did , you might have a "tight" one without all the oversized chamber / bore problems .
Gary

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

I use the lyman flash hole uniformer/debur tool on all my rifle brass. Just need to do it once.
For most of my rifles I Neck size, especially now that I only have one rifle per caliber, except for 223/556 ammo, they get FL sized and I don't waste time with flash hole uniforming either...I never shoot 'em over 100 yds and half the time, I don't get to pickup my brass.

[Three44s]

At first I began inside flash hole deburring with my best coyote rifle (a .22-250).

I read a test where the practice produced a 25% reduction in group size. I began the practice and noted that same reduction.

Later, I was working with Red Dot in 38 Special and it was not burning very clean. I tried some cases with the debur and it looked cleaner. I reasoned that the powder was being ignited more uniformly and thus had a cleaner appearance.

Since I place powder in cartridges and expect it to burn. The better it burns, the happier I am.

What began as a practice with varmint rifles eventually lead to ALL of my metallic loading.

Three44s

[Land Owner]

I'm a meat hunter and hogs are too prevalent in my woods. As they will allow, just wait a moment, I prefer head shots from a steady rest to anchor them DRT. Flash hole uniforming is not one of my case prep procedures. Neck sizing is, as well as neck uniforming, trimming thickness for consistent "grip", among others.

[John Guedry]

When I resize/deprime if the primer pocket looks filthy/dirty/semi stopped up, I take the "littlest screwdriver" in the drawer and scrape the crud out. Other than that I leave it alone.

[MostlyLeverGuns]

Depends on shooting distance, the farther you shoot, the more important various techniques become. Deburring flashholes does not show much gain inside 300 yards(unless it is crappy brass). Relatively recent brass is much better than brass made 30 years ago. Many techniques developed years ago are not really needed today with better brass available. Loading straight cartridges is the first priority. Under 50 yards, real accuracy due to specific reloading technique is hard to separate from just doing a 'good job' assembling cartridges. The firearm you are shooting must be capable of shooting 'BETTER' due to specific techniques like neck turning, weighing brass and such. Again, distance is the real separator for refined techniques. Another old saying, If YOU think it improves your shooting, IT DOES.

[Soundguy]

uniforming flash holes is something I do on brass batches when I get flaws. For instance.. a long while back I got a batch of hornady brass, and the flash holes were not exactly centered and bent and broke a decap pin. I uniformed every flash hole in that batch. I have also bought new brass that has artifacts or machine flashing in a hole. In those cases.. I too will uniform all the holes in that batch. It's not something i do to all my brass. just ones I catch with problems.

[popper]

Proper neck only sizing requires a custom die. Object is to reduce the neck sizing wear from non-custom die sqeezing, then expanding neck.
Example - you load a 308 bullet and want 2 thous neck tension. Normal die puts ID at 303, then expands to 306. Over works brass. That said, depends on the cal as some are hard to get. Neck only sizes the OD so necks need to be uniformed (neck thickness) so ID is proper. Pretty much something competitive shooters do.
Primer POCKET uniforming is worthwhile flash hole if needed. I don't.

[TheFlynn01]

Interesting, thank you for all the info guys. It gives me a bit to chew on. Its interesting to see what does and does not work. Makes it quite the journey! I might try some neck sizing with some of my once fired. I have also heard about shoulder bumping too, which seems interesting.