with the case gauge. When you think you have it, tighten down the die lock ring, tighten down the die to the press, and size another case and check it. If the shoulder isn’t set back enough, the round will not fi t into the chamber. Set back too much and the round will go in, but too far. It may not fi re because the fi ring pin will push the round forward to engage the shoulder to the chamber and not hit the primer hard enough to ignite it. If you try to re-fi re the round, some good and some bad could come of it. The round is more forward now and the fi ring pin probably will ignite the primer and fi re the round. When the primer ignites, it will back out of the case, slam against the bolt face, and fl atten out. The back of the case is trying to move back and the front of the case is trying to stretch forward. And stretch they do, leaving a ring around your case or, worse, a separated case. When I was a platoon sergeant in the Army, every- one had a separated case remover in his pocket or on their person somewhere. Their life depended on it! After all the excitement is over and you look at what happened, your fi rst words are, “Damn, that was a hot load.” No, not a hot load. Poor loading procedures! Buy and learn to use a case gauge. It saves a lot of wear and tear on your heart. Sometime you don’t use them often, but they’re the
only thing that works correctly for the job at hand. Remember: Proper case fi t to the chamber. Next step was to tumble the brass.
Once I got all the lube off, I could handle them to uniform the fl ash hole. If you’re like me, you have only one fl ash hole uniforming tool, and that happens to be .22 caliber. If you take the neck down to .20 caliber you’ll not be able to get the burr out of the fl ash hole that most military cases have. I do think a couple of manufacturers now offer a .20 caliber fl ash hole uniforming tool. All the better! I replaced the Remington .223 de-
capping assembly with a Ruger .204 de- capping assembly, without a decapping pin, that I ordered from MidwayUSA. I changed to a .233 bushing, number down, and sized the brass. Check your sizing using the case gauge again so as not to set back the shoulder. After siz- ing with the .233 bushing, the .20 caliber bullet would still slide in and out of the case mouth. The last operation is to size them again using a .228 bushing. All that’s needed is to change the bushing; your sizer die should already be locked in place. Once the last .228 bushing is used you may see a donut shape where the neck meets the shoulder, depend- ing on the softness of your brass. This is good – it will seal the cartridge to the
chamber with a slight tight closing of the bolt.
This bushing was just a guess
on my part, and it turned out to be a good one. I miked some commercial (Win. and R-P) .204 32-grain Hornady V-Max loaded rounds and they ran from .227 down to .223. This means I would have to use two different bush- ings – a .225 and a .221 – to get a good fi t for the bullet. I’ll probably not use commercial brass at all; I would have to buy two more bushings. Sizing with the .228 bushing wouldn’t let the bul- let slide into the case mouth because of the thickness of the military brass. All of the rounds should have the same consistency and neck tension. Once the case is fi re-formed, just use the .228 for your daily full length sizing. Down the road I think I’ll get a .226 bushing, just in case I might need a snugger fi t. Into the tumbler again to get the
lube off and now I’m ready to check the length of the fi nished cases. They were all too long. Military cases are long to facilitate putting a hard crimp into the cannelure of the bullet to keep it in place during high rate fully automatic fi re. I full length size and trim all of my
brass to the “trim-to” length. Using my .20 Practical, I’ll stick to 1.750” length, of the parent .223 Remington case. All of my ammo fi ts in everybody’s rifl e of the same caliber, because I do this. When you “neck size only” you run the risk of getting a case stuck in the chamber on a hot day or with a hot gun. Yes, you might get better accuracy. But one ten thousandth of an inch in accuracy doesn’t really make that much differ- ence in a prairie dog town. Minute of prairie dog is good enough. There are way too many other variables to worry about such as wind, heat, mirage, bugs, and snakes, to name just some. When I get ready to trim my brass
Cartridges from left: .20 Tactical, .20 Practical, .204 Ruger. Page 136 October — December 2011
I use several methods. The old Lyman trimmer and deburring tool is labor in- tensive, but works. When I have just a few cases I use this method. Another is a multi-tool called the Tri-Cut that does the inside, outside, and trims to length, all in one pass using a hand crank trim- mer or an electric one. I use this method when I have a couple of hundred cases to do. It’s reasonably fast and you can easily do a couple of hundred in an hour or so. But when I have lots (more than 200 or 300) of cases, then I use the big
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