PRS Reloading Question on Neck Tension

[nucular]

I am really just getting into the precision side of rifle reloading. I am primarily doing 6.5 Creedmor but also reload .223 and .300 although i don't really do precision shooting with those.

For 6.5, I currently use a rock chucker and have the full set of lee dies (includes FL sizer and neck collet sizer). I do not have neck mandrels/die so what I was thinking was that I would do the full length size in the FL die without the neck ball in order to resize and bump the shoulder and then run it through the collet resizer to set the neck tension. Would I be better off to replace the collet die with a mandrel die?

 

[Creedmoor]

As reasonable as Lee die are I would just buy what you dont have and try them in 6.5 and see what works better for you. This conversation can really get in the weeds quickly lol.

Us, I'm old so I use Redding Bushing dies for a few calibers in my bolts.

I have friends both with 338 Lapuas that also used the same Redding dies and have switched over to Lee Mandrels and collets and have found improvement with accuracy and a smaller deviation spread.

 

[nucular]

That makes sense. I'll try out the fl die and collet and see how it goes. I got OK results with my last batch but SD and es were higher than I like. I think that's a combination of neck tension and a low quality scale so those are what I'm attacking first.

 

[Creedmoor]

Others will chime in I'm sure.
Please post what you find.

 

[Bill2905]

I wouldn't get too hung up on SD and ES. Try your preferred methods of adjusting neck tension and shoot them on paper. The target will tell you how well it's working (or not).

Standard FL sizers typically oversize the neck. A FL bushing die followed by a mandrel die will give you better control of that process without overworking the brass. I'm not familiar with collet dies so I can't comment on those.