Downsides to necking down brass?

[harlow]

Other than the initial work of doing the neck sizing is there any downside to necking down brass?

I get necking up thins the walls, I'm just asking about necking down specifically at this point.

I notice 7mm-08 brass is about 20% more $$$ than .308 brass for some reason.

Any reason you wouldn't buy the .308 and downsize it to save the coin?

[yoshie]

Down side is all the stuff you may need to correct problems with excessively think necks that can occur when sizing down, inside neck reamer/outside neck turner. Also thin necks won't last as long unless you anneal them

[Lorgar]

Not in my case.

I have about 350 or so brass for my 7mm-08 at the moment and every single piece is necked down .308 brass. I'm getting under 0.4 MOA out of mine.

Maybe for extreme accuracy shooting? Not my thing though so I couldn't say.

[harlow]

Are you burning your necks, Lorgar?

[Lorgar]

Nope.

Resizing with Redding neck-only dies and that's it.

No neck-turning, or anything else...

[yoshie]

Yeah I haven't had problems either, but it can happen. The other downside is your 7-08 cases have 308 stamped one the back and you're putting them in a rifle chambered for 7-08. That's pretty much the only downsides to it. Get the 308s and save yourself some money.

[Westy]

Alot of the Bench Guys(my mad Brother ) are necking down 220 Russian to 6mmPPC and are shooting .2 MOA @100M so I reckon it won't effect your accuracy

[Streamline]

Depends on what you want. For hunting, it's likely no problem. For target accuracy it can need a little more work.

If you're lucky you end up like Yoshie and Lorgar and it's smooth sailing.

Some guys find they have to fireform them first to get the accuracy they want out of them. That's partly the demands they're putting on the brass, but still.

If you have to load/fire them all once after sizing before getting the result you want any saving on brass is more than spent on powder and bullets in fire forming.

It can depend...