intermittent poor neck tension.

[2meterB]

About every 5th piece of brass has poor neck tension.

HXP 30.06 brass
Hornady 150gr FMJBT
Lee 30.06 full size dies
Brass length is around 2.491-2.495
NO crimp

Lube was cleaned off the brass before loading with a very light detergent, and thoroughly rinsed.

If i "hand fit" the projectile in the neck of a case, it doesn't feel any different between one that is going to be a problem, and one that will be fine.

But about every 5th piece of brass, I can push the projectile in deeper with my fingers. Once it pushes in a little ways, it can't be pushed further - passes the bench test.

I watch every round I size - the ram fully connects with the die each time. It's adjusted to the shellholder, then a small additional turn - which pushes the shoulder back about .001 ~ .002.

Not sure if this is a brass issue, die issue, or I've done something wrong.

This brass has only been fired once, and never reloaded before.

[pacrat]

Expander button "may" be slightly oversize for that particular brass. It should be .001-.002" smaller than bullet dia. [different brass lots have different resiliance]

Case necks "may" not be consistant thickness.

JM2cd as to possibles

[bigedp51]

I'm in the process of sizing a large batch of HXP 30-06 brass for my M1 Garand and pacrat is correct. I reduced the diameter of the expander button by .001 but this will not solve 100% of the problem because the neck thickness varies.

You have two choices

1. Neck turn the brass to a uniform thickness. Just remember you do not have match quality brass and this brass has variations in thickness and may not be worth all the work trying to make them uniform.

2. Crimp the bullets just as they came from the factory.

You need to decide how accurate you want your ammo to be and what type rifle you are going to be shooting it in. I will not be neck turning brass to shoot out of a well used M1 but a newer bolt action rifle "might" be a different story.

On my reloading bench I have a runout gauge and a neck thickness gauge and I check each case for thickness and runout after sizing. I could feel the difference when the expander button passed through the necks of the cases and knew what the problem was.

If you want to load more accurate ammunition I can't stress enough the need for a runout gauge and neck thickness gauge. The cases that will give you the most runout are the cases with unequal neck wall thickness





Bottom line, your not doing anything wrong, you just need gauges to "see" what the problem is. And this ammo was made for use in the M1 Garand and machine guns and it isn't Lapua brass.

[2meterB]

It is for my m1. Not trying to make match ammo or anything. Just reasonably accirate at 100 yards


I dkd notice that resizing did feel smoother on some pieces... I'll pay more attention to those next time

[thenodnarb]

Could it be brass fatigue? Anneal one of these troublesome cases and resize it again. See if the problem goes away on that case.

[gau17]

Try annealing your brass.

[OpenSightsOnly]

It is for my m1. Not trying to make match ammo or anything. Just reasonably accirate at 100 yards


I dkd notice that resizing did feel smoother on some pieces... I'll pay more attention to those next time

I use a cartridge headspace gauge and RCBS dies to FL size my once fired HXP brass.

Used the 0.002 to bump the shoulder back of the once fired brass. FL die is set and using that on a single stage press.

If you still have the unprocessed brass, measure the shoulder and compare that to an FL sized brass.

[bigedp51]

Could it be brass fatigue? Anneal one of these troublesome cases and resize it again. See if the problem goes away on that case.

thenodnarb

Its the HXP brass it varies in neck thickness approximately .003 and my expander button is .306, and I use a unmodified .307 expander on my Remington cases, meaning the .306 expander I'm using now doesn't even touch the inside of the Remington necks.

The problem with a standard .307 expander button was excessive runout caused by the HXP thicker case necks and uneven neck thickness and pulling the necks off center.

So again I turned the necks on my HXP cases and saw no difference in accuracy and anything under .003 neck runout is considered match grade for miltary ammo and its long fat chamber.

I just have a "rack grade" M1 and your mileage may vary with a better grade M1. To me it wasn't worth treating these cases like benchrest ammo and all the prep work and uniforming them for no increase in accuracy in a well used M1.

BUT HXP cases are very sought after by the M1 shooters because it lasts so long.