BHuij
Active Member
Hey everyone--
Back again with another weird question. I've been shooting more cast .223 through my AR. It's accurate enough to be enjoyable plinking, and I really wanted to test out a new powder and a new red dot sight I got for my birthday. Still planning on getting a separate upper or just replacing the barrel for now to make the AR into a .300 BLK, just have a lot of stuff higher up on the priority list as my wife and I are trying to put a down payment together for our first home.
So during all of my more "serious" testing with .223 in my AR, I was mostly sizing to .225" after powder coating. Never had any trouble seating the bullets since I was using a Lee universal expanding die to slightly bell the case necks before charging/seating.
With my most recent batch of .223 bullets that I have culled, gas checked, PC'd, and heat-treated to BHN 28, I forgot to size. They are micing out to .228" in diameter, and now that they're super hard, I'm hesitant to try sizing them down. They still seem to seat just fine and they're certainly no less accurate than the .225s, but I kind of wondered if I was swaging them down upon seating anyway. This is especially true since I am using the stock Lee expander ball in my sizing die, which they say sizes to an actual inner diameter of .223". I haven't confirmed that myself, since I don't have the tools to get a critical ID measurement.
As luck would have it, I accidentally seated a bullet before charging the case the other day, so I ended up having to pull the bullet with my kinetic puller. As a side note, pulling light 55gr bullets that are seated with at least .005" of neck tension takes an insane amount of hammering with that thing... haha. But it came out and I decided to mic it and see if it was mashed. Nope. Still exactly .228". So it appears having a BHN of 28 is hard enough to resist being swaged even with excessive neck tension.
So my question is, should I be worried about this, or would it be reasonable to expect an increase in accuracy if I was using less neck tension? I can have Lee make me a custom expander ball for my sizing die for like $8 or something, that would give me an actual inner diameter of, say, .225" or .226".
My understanding is that less neck tension = less pressure = potentially a less consistent burn. Since I'm currently using a reduced load of Ramshot TAC, which is a ball powder, "consistent burn" is already kind of a tall order. I'm not sure lowering my neck tension would actually help anything. Whereas in my research, the only reason I could find to be worried about excessive neck tension with cast bullets was to make sure it wasn't so tight it was swaging the bullets down. Other than that, it seems consistency from round to round is more important than more or less actual tension, although most people say somewhere in the neighborhood of 0.002" is ideal.
So, try with less neck tension, or is that unlikely to actually help anything? I know the only way to find out is to try it, but I'm not sure whether it's worth trying yet.
Back again with another weird question. I've been shooting more cast .223 through my AR. It's accurate enough to be enjoyable plinking, and I really wanted to test out a new powder and a new red dot sight I got for my birthday. Still planning on getting a separate upper or just replacing the barrel for now to make the AR into a .300 BLK, just have a lot of stuff higher up on the priority list as my wife and I are trying to put a down payment together for our first home.
So during all of my more "serious" testing with .223 in my AR, I was mostly sizing to .225" after powder coating. Never had any trouble seating the bullets since I was using a Lee universal expanding die to slightly bell the case necks before charging/seating.
With my most recent batch of .223 bullets that I have culled, gas checked, PC'd, and heat-treated to BHN 28, I forgot to size. They are micing out to .228" in diameter, and now that they're super hard, I'm hesitant to try sizing them down. They still seem to seat just fine and they're certainly no less accurate than the .225s, but I kind of wondered if I was swaging them down upon seating anyway. This is especially true since I am using the stock Lee expander ball in my sizing die, which they say sizes to an actual inner diameter of .223". I haven't confirmed that myself, since I don't have the tools to get a critical ID measurement.
As luck would have it, I accidentally seated a bullet before charging the case the other day, so I ended up having to pull the bullet with my kinetic puller. As a side note, pulling light 55gr bullets that are seated with at least .005" of neck tension takes an insane amount of hammering with that thing... haha. But it came out and I decided to mic it and see if it was mashed. Nope. Still exactly .228". So it appears having a BHN of 28 is hard enough to resist being swaged even with excessive neck tension.
So my question is, should I be worried about this, or would it be reasonable to expect an increase in accuracy if I was using less neck tension? I can have Lee make me a custom expander ball for my sizing die for like $8 or something, that would give me an actual inner diameter of, say, .225" or .226".
My understanding is that less neck tension = less pressure = potentially a less consistent burn. Since I'm currently using a reduced load of Ramshot TAC, which is a ball powder, "consistent burn" is already kind of a tall order. I'm not sure lowering my neck tension would actually help anything. Whereas in my research, the only reason I could find to be worried about excessive neck tension with cast bullets was to make sure it wasn't so tight it was swaging the bullets down. Other than that, it seems consistency from round to round is more important than more or less actual tension, although most people say somewhere in the neighborhood of 0.002" is ideal.
So, try with less neck tension, or is that unlikely to actually help anything? I know the only way to find out is to try it, but I'm not sure whether it's worth trying yet.