Neck Turning Advice - Cutting Depth

[ebb]

I know what your question was but I think that it is way more complex than that. The chamber ID and a loaded round OD and an amount of clearance between the 2 have to come up in this conversation. If you have already done that MY BAD. But if you just pick a number out of the sky, turning may be doing more harm than good.

 

[Straightshooter1]

I know what your question was but I think that it is way more complex than that. The chamber ID and a loaded round OD and an amount of clearance between the 2 have to come up in this conversation. If you have already done that MY BAD. But if you just pick a number out of the sky, turning may be doing more harm than good.

You make a good point and I tend to agree that more harm might be done than good.

I tried an experiment, as I often like to do, where I turned some of my range .308 brass down to .0125". Loaded and fired them out of my RPR with Krieger barrel to see whether I was going to do "more harm than good". To my surprise, they performed really really well, where I was tempted to turn my good brass down to that. I didn't reload and fire them but a couple more times (annealing after every firing as I typically do) and they held up and performed just fine. I've got them stored away now and doubt I'll ever use them again, just because just because my good brass does so well being turned to .014".

 

[Chris Edmondson]

The odd thing about neck turning is if you don't have 100% cleanup, it's hard to know what the new wall thickness really is. As far as cutting depth goes, I've found that cartridge brass, and conventional turning cutters go, it's trial and error. The outcome needs to be considered; is it surface finish, or overall dimensional accuracy? From there it moves to what the target says.