Neck tension difference between heavy or light per caliber

mtmojo

FNG
Joined
Jul 3, 2023
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Wanted to get people's thoughts on if they change the neck tension when changing between bullets for the same caliber. Say going from 175 ELDX to 195 EOL Bergers in a 7 PRC? Or say a 140 ELDX to a 156 EOL Berger in 6.5 PRC? Is the pressure difference enough to even mess around? Thank you
 
Wanted to get people's thoughts on if they change the neck tension when changing between bullets for the same caliber. Say going from 175 ELDX to 195 EOL Bergers in a 7 PRC? Or say a 140 ELDX to a 156 EOL Berger in 6.5 PRC? Is the pressure difference enough to even mess around? Thank you
The quick answer for 95% (maybe 99.9%) of situations is no, just load all bullets with the same neck tension.

However, each bullet/powder combination is its own collection of what ifs. It’s not something to start with, but if you have a load that has gone through a number of tweaks and it’s close but not quite acceptable, then it might be worth varying nt. An old timer competitive shooter told me more guns shoot poorly with too little neck tension rather than too much. Extra light neck tension in a hunting rifle is asking for trouble.

The cool thing about anything reloading related is finding out if a change makes a difference on target is as simple as 10 rounds of each shot round robin. It made so little difference the few times I’ve tried it, it’s not even on my radar screen unless the rifle is shooting less than 1/2 MOA.
 
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