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necking down Hornady 6.5 Creedmoor to 6 Creedmoor

dgheriani

Private
Full Member
Minuteman
Feb 10, 2017
807
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I've got a rifle coming with a few new barrels, one of which is a 6 creed. I've got 100 pieces of factory 6 creed brass and 400 pieces of 1x fired 6.5 creed that I got from a buddy of mine who shoots matches with factory ammo. I have a Redding Comp FL bushing die in 6 creed as I was hoping to be doing brass resizing in one step instead of 2 (I've always used a Redding body die to bump the shoulder and a Lee collet die to do the neck, makes for quite concentric ammo) but I started reading stuff about the expander ball causing runout issues and how guys are removing the expander ball and using an expander mandrel in a separate step. Fair enough.

My question is, is there any issue necking down the brass in the 2 step method (ie bushing die without expander ball followed by expander mandrel) or should I just use the bushing die as intended for the first go around? I plan on using the factory 6 creed brass I have for load dev and to determine the setting for my die to be bumping teh shoulder back the appropriate 2 thou. Thoughts?
 
Best to use a FL die without the expander to neck down the case since bushing will not size down to the neck shoulder junction. The expander mandrel can be used afterward and the bushing die used in subsequent reloading. I would recommend checking neck wall thickness after necking down since the operation will thicken the necks to make sure you have sufficient neck clearance in the chamber. Have necked down several hundred 6.5 CM cases to 6mm without issue by doing the aforementioned.
 
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ive necked down 400 pcs of 6.5CM lapua to 6mm CM with a full length whidden with the expander and never had an issues...a little imperial on a Q-tip to the inside of the neck run it through the sizer load and shoot.
 
ive necked down 400 pcs of 6.5CM lapua to 6mm CM with a full length whidden with the expander and never had an issues...a little imperial on a Q-tip to the inside of the neck run it through the sizer load and shoot.

Whidden die with bushing or regular FL die?
 
full length die...i dont use bushing dies had to many problems with them plus at some point you have to FL size so i just do it every time...keeps things consistent.