fire form or resize? 350 Legend bolt action

[Timmis2]

New to reloading for 350 Legend bolt-action. I have only reloaded pistol ammo and have always resized because I've always used range brass, once fired, and new brass and they will be shared among several pistols of the same caliber.

Curious about resizing vs fire formed for 350 Legend though using one rifle. Not sure if fire forming is better for straight wall cases or makes no difference. By fire forming I mean skipping resizing after they are shot by me with the same rifle they will be reloaded for. I assume resizing is always recommended, especially when your brass may be reloaded with a different recipe and different projectile for it's next use. Since 350L head spaces from the case mouth, resizing is probably more critical? I'm starting with new Starline brass. Some will be reloaded at lower pressure subsonic loads. I could separate them so subsonic brass is only reloaded with subsonic loads again. Crimping may necessitate resizing I imagine too.As a bolt-action, loads may need less crimp and I won't be crimping much unless it benefits accuracy and velocity in testing new loads.

 

[Hoser]

FL resize to ensure 100% reliability.

Unless there is a cannelure, I would go with a slight taper crimp. Neck tension should be more than enough.

 

[tommeboy]

trim length and crimp are the main things you want to get right. NEVER!!!!!!!!!!!! role crimp. Taper is what you need. Or you will be blowing case heads. Always FL size. Case head expansion on these is a major problem. And that is from over loading. Once a primer is showing problems you are already over pressure with this one. Case head diameter is where you need to watch for pressure.

Don't listen to all the blow hards that WIN brass is junk. They will tell you that you need starline brass. Starline brass is made thinner and has more case capacity and that alone is why they think it is better. The only reason they say that is because of the extra room the pressures are lower when using it. But they have to increase charges to get more speed then they too will have case head expansion issues.

And if you use range brass, if it was shot out of an AR gun you might not be able to size them correctly to fit in a bolt action chamber. I had a AR15 and a Ruger Ranch in this. I could not use brass out of the AR in the Ruger as it had more expansion due to a oversized chamber in the AR. Sizing dies do not size far enough on this cartridge no matter who makes the dies. So what I did was to chuck my FL die up in my lathe and removed material off the bottom of the die till it sized correctly. If you look at the dies they will have a deep chamfer on the face to aid getting the case into the dies. This is what I removed to size more of the case head.