Neck turning and tension

[Spot Shooter]

I've never turned necks because I feel you may not get the right neck tension if you aren't using special dies where you can adjust the neck sizing.

  Is that the case, can neck turning be bad if your only using standard dies?

Spot

[John Traveler]

Neck turning is normally important onlly for ultra-precision benchrest rifles with tight-neck chambers and special benchrest quality reloading dies.  It's used to eliminate or minimize one more variable that makes the difference between winning or second place.

The only other application that comes to mind is in cartridge case conversions where considerable necking down is needed to form the new case.  For your off-the-shelf reloading dies and standard SAAMI chambers, it's probably a waste of time and money.

[Catfish]

John summed it up real well. I have acouple of rifles that I turn necks on. They are all wildcat custom rifles with a tight neck chamber. I like to turn my necks so that I get .002 neck expanction. This gives me a consistant bullet pull and works the brass at a minimum for longer case life. Factory chambers are so large to start with you will do nothing but shorten the life of your cases if you turn the necks. That is because you not only have less brass in the neck, but it has to streach more with every shot and resizeing.