Hello,
Was hoping to gain assistance from the brain trust on the above wildcatting adventure. We have some experience in wild catting mostly in necking up and larger cal builds. this 1 is got me scratching my head. Also note I have not worked on anything where I have had to turn necks so a bit uncomfortable to me.
To begin
We purchase on site a use reamer, dies, Lapua 243 brass, (some had been fire formed) package.
We spun up a barrel, reamer cut great. I did not see any issue with bore scope.
We tried to chamber a resized piece of brass an it would not chamber. We discovered the neck area was to small in diameter for the chamber. Also tried prior fire form an it would not fit.
The reamer neck is marked .2538 on reamer.
a resize case is .255 from the Redding die set.
in forming the case the wall will get .0025 thicker.
a case with bullet seated is .2575
We necked turned some brass to .250 which is .003-.004 under. With bullet seated it measures .2515. This should give me almost .003 clearance. Ammo chambered fine, we shot it and rifle shot well 12 rounds cover with a quarter. I did not think that was bad as we picked a starting charge completely at random.
Noticed 50% of cases the neck split. Measured the fired cases all measured .254 and split ones .2545 and .255 respectively.
Of note i tried tome federal cases and neck measures were identical to the Lapua.
I feel I am missing something? Am I doing the math wrong? Hoping some one with experience on this caliber and wildcatting can point me in a better direction. I feel that ream necks may help but yet reading prior posts that leads to bad issues.
Thank you in advance for your guidance.
Was hoping to gain assistance from the brain trust on the above wildcatting adventure. We have some experience in wild catting mostly in necking up and larger cal builds. this 1 is got me scratching my head. Also note I have not worked on anything where I have had to turn necks so a bit uncomfortable to me.
To begin
We purchase on site a use reamer, dies, Lapua 243 brass, (some had been fire formed) package.
We spun up a barrel, reamer cut great. I did not see any issue with bore scope.
We tried to chamber a resized piece of brass an it would not chamber. We discovered the neck area was to small in diameter for the chamber. Also tried prior fire form an it would not fit.
The reamer neck is marked .2538 on reamer.
a resize case is .255 from the Redding die set.
in forming the case the wall will get .0025 thicker.
a case with bullet seated is .2575
We necked turned some brass to .250 which is .003-.004 under. With bullet seated it measures .2515. This should give me almost .003 clearance. Ammo chambered fine, we shot it and rifle shot well 12 rounds cover with a quarter. I did not think that was bad as we picked a starting charge completely at random.
Noticed 50% of cases the neck split. Measured the fired cases all measured .254 and split ones .2545 and .255 respectively.
Of note i tried tome federal cases and neck measures were identical to the Lapua.
I feel I am missing something? Am I doing the math wrong? Hoping some one with experience on this caliber and wildcatting can point me in a better direction. I feel that ream necks may help but yet reading prior posts that leads to bad issues.
Thank you in advance for your guidance.
