Totally disagree...What good is a honed die....
Bart has explained it produced the same accuracy as the bushing die for Sierra.
you are stuck with one neck tension diameter, then what if it doesn't work, at least bushings or mandrels aren't part of the die.
You address this by knowing what works for you before you get the die honed, and then get it honed to produce the proven good interference fit (aka, neck tension). It then gives you better case concentricity and saves you the expansion step which means it works the brass less and your cases last longer.
Your neck tension of .002 (is standard neck tension for FL sizing dies) or even .003 is too general and may not be sufficient enough...0.002" (NOT A GOOD NUMBER)
I don't think weren't following what I said. I was suggesting that 0.002" interference fit is probably
about what you actually have now. I say this because you said you use an expander -0.001" below bullet diameter. Brass is a little springy, even when annealed. The circumferential tension on that brass spring is what holds bullets in a case neck. Thus, case necks pushed outward by an expander spring back down in diameter a little after the expander has passed through the neck. As a result, your neck is a little narrower than the expander after the expander is pulled out. If you have about a thousandth of spring-back after the mandrel is withdrawn (a common amount), you would have roughly 0.002" of final interference fit when the spring-back has been included.
The 0.003" number I mentioned is not an interference fit, but a honed neck or neck bushing diameter suggestion. It is based on the assumption, again, that the brass will spring back 0.001", but this time it would spring outward because you are sizing it down. After springing outward, it would again leave you with the same final -0.002" that is about what I suspect you are ending up with now.
So it was all about trying to match what you use have now.
You can prove this to yourself by measuring around the outside of case necks below the mouth and over top of where the seated bullet's full diameter will be. Do this to cases after you have expanded them, and then do it again after you have loaded them and the bullet has been seated under the measuring point. Average the empty case neck numbers and average the after-bullet-seating numbers. The difference between the two averages will be the average neck-to-bullet interference fit or neck tension you have actually been getting. I recommend measuring 30 because cases this way because each case can spring a little differently and the necks can be slightly out of round after expansion, so doing that many will do a good job of averaging out that sort of error.
It is perfectly possible that I am wrong about how much spring to allow for you because I don't know the caliber you are loading nor exactly how springy your annealing method is leaving your necks. I only know there will be some spring-back because if there were none, the necks wouldn't hold onto your bullets. Measuring as I described will tell you how much spring-back you are actually getting. I've seen about 0.001" of spring-back frequently, but I've also seen half that and twice that depending on how hard the neck is. Once you know how much you are actually getting, you will know what to allow for with bushings or with a honed neck, either way.