Decap dies from Sinclair (left) and Redding


sufficed. We want the die neck (or bushing as appropriate) to be 0.002-0.003 inches below the loaded round outside diameter to allow for 0.001 inch spring-back. Add in another thou’ neck O/D reduction for a bit more case-neck grip on the bullet shank if you plan to use moly, WS2 or HBN (Hexagonal Boron Nitride) friction reducing coated bullets.


As I originally used the slightly ‘skinny’ moly- coated 105gn Lapua Silver Scenar bullet in my 6BR, I decided to go a little on the ‘tight’ side. This also allowed for future brass lots with thinner necks and/or those that have been given a light ‘clean-up’ neck turn. For the ‘naked’ 105gn Berger VLDs that I subsequently adopted, the resulting neck tension was a little on the high side with cases straight out of the die, so I ran them over Sinclair’s E24 expander mandrel from my neck-turning toolkit to overcome this,


56 Target Shooter


the inside neck-walls needing to be lightly lubed for this operation.


The mandrel is press-mounted in the same company’s Gen II mandrel die body that allows it to ‘float’ and therefore self-centre easily in the case-neck. Phew, that’s three different dies and press jobs just to get a collection of resized cases! This is where my Forster Co-Ax press proves a life - or at any rate wrist – saver, with dies simply slid into and out of the press-frame. Actually, if I’m being lazy, or loading short-range practice/load-development ammo, I simply screw the de-cap/expander stem back into the sizer die. With minimal neck-reduction taking place, the expander ball does very little work (likewise the Redding Type ‘S’) reducing effort on the press-handle and reducing the chances of pulling the neck out of alignment.


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