Hornady brass

C

cptjack

New member
Shooting 6.5 cm tikka 3x. Second loading. Getting split necks. After 4 loadings, have 5 split necks. Hornady says I have a wide chamber. ANYONE HAVE THIS PROBLEM? Thanks.
 
If you measure the neck over top of a loaded bullet and a fired cases, how many thousandths of difference do you see? It is also possible to get a sizing die that squeezes the neck much narrower than necessary before expanding it. In that case, you can eliminate a lot of the extra working of the brass by going to a die that uses neck bushings and picking a bushing wide enough that you barely feel the neck pulling over the expander when you withdraw the case. You can also resize the case body separately in a Redding Body Die and the neck in a Lee Collet Die to prevent over-working.
 
8 loadings on my Hornady Brass with naught an issue. I am still waiting for the loose primer pocket syndrome. I also have been fortunate with finding medium loads with phenomenal accuracy and more than acceptable speeds for my distances.
 
I have never had a problem with Hornady brass except in my tikka 6.5 creed IS THE RCBS BUSHING DIE A GOOD TOOL?
 
IS THE RCBS BUSHING DIE A GOOD TOOL?
Click to expand...

I don't see how the die could be blamed for neck splits, that would be caused by changes in the brass malleability in the neck and shoulder area. Work hardening from working the brass too would be culprit. You need to look at your die adjustment and choice of bushing. Compressing the neck down too far and then stretching it out is what is causing the issue

edit , could be a chamber issue also. If you double check your adjustments etc and the problem continues get Redding or Whidden to make you a custom die. Send them three fired cases and a couple of months later you get a die custom fitted for that chamber
 
Last edited:
Back to the original topic, the only time I used Hornady brass was when I was first starting to reload bottleneck cases. I had a lot of neck separation issues with .204 Ruger cases. I traced my problem down to my die adjustment. I was creating excessive headspace by pushing the shoulder back too far. The case would separate just at the junction of the shoulder and the neck. Took me 4 or 5 seperated cases to figure it out but once I readjusted the die properly the issue went away

Since your issue is neck splitting I suspect too small a bushing. Size a case without primer or powder, take a measurement ot the outside neck diameter. Then seat a bullet and take the measurement again. The neck should be .002 to .004 larger with the bullet inserted. I go with .004 myself. I don't anneal so after a few firings I tend to get a bit of brass springback as the brass hardens after ten or so firings I find that I am only getting .003 neck tension. Never seen it get any less than that and found there is little to no difference in performance between .003 and .004
 
Last edited:
Split necks

Only used Hornady brass for 444 Marlin and still reloading the original 100 more than 30 years without issue.

FYI, best brass I have ever used is Norma for 6mm Remington caliber.
 
The way the die could be an issue is excess working of the brass. Standard dies have to work with the thinest neck walls made, so they over-resize the average neck wall too small and then expand it back out, overworking it going in and working it the other way coming out. Both steps add work hardening. If you go to a bushing die and select a bushing generous enough so your particular lot of brass is only resized to final size, you skip the over-reducing and you skip the expansion, reducing overall working of the brass. If, in fact, the neck portion of your chamber is generous, then this will compensate to some extent by reducing how much the brass is worked further for each reloading cycle.

RCBS makes both Full Length and Neck (only) bushing-type sizing dies. I have no reason to believe there is any problem with them. Just be sure you get the one you need. You should not have to buy it as part of a set with their Gold Medal seating die. I do not find that seating die design to work as well as the Redding and Forster competition/benchrest designs. And it at least one test by John Feamster, it was found not to work as well at minimizing runout as the standard RCBS seating die does.

But this begs the question, is your chamber oversized? You can tell by measuring your as-fired cases.
 
The reason I ruled out the dies being a issue is that RCBS sells how many hundred or thousand dies per year. If their dies caused problems I am pretty sure the internet would be flooded with complaints and people would stop buying them.

Also when I have a issue with something like this I can trace it back to my error 99.999% of the time
 
that is why I use bushing dies and toss the expander bushing Sako2

.260 Rem (6.5) Lapua Brass with .0145 wall thickness on 7th firing .Redding bushing die with a .290 bushing

after firing OD .297 ID .2670
after sizing no bullet OD .290 ID .2605
after bullet seated OD .2945

if I were to turn those case necks to a .012 wall thickness my bushing would have to be replaced with a .284 or .285 bushing
 
Never ran into it before Hounddawg. Always something to learn in this hobby of ours. Wish i would have figured it out before i lost a bunch of brass.
 
yeah I am also constantly learning something new myself, it is quite the challenging hobby. Always reevaluating what I think I know and making adjustments here and there and changing my thoughts on this or that. Currently I am tinkering with wildcatting, neck turning and custom dies
 
I use a Redding body die followed by a Lee Collet Neck sizing die and trim and anneal every four loadings and have some Hornady brass with a dozen cycles on them.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top