Question for 20 Vartarg shooters...

[MQ1]

The neck on my Savage Pre-fit is .232. What do your necks approximately measure with Lapua brass (or Norma)? I'm curious if I'll have to turn necks, and I'm still waiting for dies

MQ1

 

[th82457]

I have a .232 neck chamber and I turn my necks to a .228 loaded diameter. You will need to turn Lapua brass for sure.

Terry

 

[waterfwlr]

Look on page 3. "Couple of vartarg questions". You are going to have to turn

 

[JohnHenry]

With my lot of Lapua brass, the loaded unturned outside neck diameter measures .2318. I have some Norma 221 Fireball brass but have not formed any 20VT from it yet. Will form a piece today and check the neck diameter.

 

[MQ1]

Thanks for the info, guys...I must have been working too much this past week to not see the same basic post...

MQ1

 

[JohnHenry]

MQ1, Formed a 20VT from Norma 221 brass and seated a 32 grain Sierra Blitzking bullet. Measured the loaded outside neck diameter with a micrometer and got ,2305. Also measured at .200 above the base and got .3731 for the Norma brass.

 

[MQ1]

Thanks for the measurement, JohnHenry. I picked up 500 Norma .221 Cases from Shiraz when it first came out. They certainly look like good cases, but just in case I picked up a couple hundred Lapua cases for good measure.

MQ1

 

[Ledd Slinger]

I had a 20VT for a while and did a lot of experimenting with different brass. Even forming from 223.

It would fit in a .232 chamber if you necked up 17 Fireball brass, but I had a lot of trouble splitting necks when I tried that so I only used 221 FB brass and necked it down. Maybe I just had a bad batch of brass, don't know. Maybe others have had success that way, but from my experience, I would not recommend using 17 FB brass.

I did NOT have a tight neck chamber and had to turn all the Remington 221 FB necks down after reducing to 20 cal. They would fit without turning, but every handful of pieces would be pretty tight. Probably because Remington wall thickness is not very concentric at all out of the bag. But they all had to be close enough to the wall of the chamber neck that when one was a little out of whack, it made it tight.