21st Century Expander Mandrels - Setting consistent Neck Tension

when it comes to precision reloading for whatever reason neck tension is one of those things that we keep hearing more and more about in today's video we're going to cover these 21st century expander manuals show you how you can use them to set neck tension in your reloading process as well as several other advantages that they can provide stick around as you can see on a reloading bench today we've got several products from 21st century reloading the primer plugs which we've previously reviewed here on the channel but as well as the new products for today which we're going to talk about is the expander die body as well as the expander mandrels that you can use in the die body expander mandrels are nothing new to this channel i've been using them for a very long time but not the ones from 21st century you may or may not be aware that sinclair actually makes expander mandrels and expander mandrel dies however they just don't have as many options as is offered by 21st century and we're going to go over that in detail today one thing that i would like to make clear though at the beginning of the video is if you actually already have a sinclair expander mandrel die you don't necessarily have to get the new dye body the mandrels that we're going to discuss today actually will fit in this die and so you don't need to buy a new dye body if you don't want to you can just buy the precision mandrels and use them in your sinclair die if you already have one if you don't already own the sinclair you can certainly pick one up from 21st century reloading and you're not going to be disappointed just to go over these a little bit more detail the expander die body offered by 21st century reloading is a standard 7 8 thread that you're used to with all of your dies it's machined to accept a 3 8 die shank expander 21st century states that the expander die body has a free floating ring this tool helps you keep your cases concentric during the expanding operation the mandrel is allowed to free float inside the case to compensate for slight press ram and shell holder misalignment this is cnc machined from stainless steel bar stock knurled head for easy in and out adjustment the stainless steel cap retains the expander mandrel and allows the floating function you can order this with or without the die lock ring i actually ordered mine without it the standard dye bodies part number is 904 if you'd like it without the ring it's part number 903 and one of my favorite options of this that sinclair does not offer that i'm aware of is they actually offer this in an extra long dye body it's actually three quarters inch longer than the standard so in case you're interested for loading for magnum cartridges you can get the 904el or without the ring the 903el that's going to allow you to set up the appropriate press height so you're not smashing the neck of the case into your expander die body it's an interesting offering if you reload for magnum cartridges and if i'm correct i don't believe sinclair has a similar offering so far they've worked really well and i've had no complaints on my reloading bench when i first started looking at the 21st century expander mandrel offerings i was very excited about the sheer number of offerings available the expander mandrels are available in half thousand increments and 22 to 338 and they range from 1 000 above the projectile caliber to at least 3 000 below the projectile diameter depending on the caliber among other things this allows us to fine tune the neck tension on our loads according to 21st century's documentation the oversized explainers will help straighten your necks prior to sizing possibly to improve concentricity and their web page will tell you that there are extra steps that are involved to ensure the precision and that these are double checked prior to packaging the set we're primarily talking about today is in 6.5 millimeter it starts all the way down at 0.2610 and goes all the way to 0.2650 in half thousands increments to purchase these individually at least the time of filming these are going for 17.99 a piece which for such a nice product i think is a very reasonable price i don't think it's particularly necessary to buy the whole kit but if you decided to there is a slight discount i think if you purchase the whole kit it knocks off not quite 17 if you were to pick up this kit in 30 caliber i believe that there is 11 options available not just nine so you might be asking at this point what do you even use these things for and there's actually several uses neck tension is going to be the primary thing we're going to discuss but a couple other things you might want to think about if you're actually thinking about doing some brass conversion from another caliber and you needed to open the necks up or simply if someone stepped on a case neck and you want to reopen that case neck you might be able to easily use one of these expander manners to open that neck back up and bring it very close to the proper dimension while maintaining concentricity in your cases these can also be very useful for neck turning to be able to set the inside diameter of your neck to exactly what you want it to be to optimize for your neck turning process the primary use of these expander manuals on my reloading bench is setting the inside neck diameter when i do case sizing being able to use these manuals allows me to set the neck tension to exactly what i want it to be without having to worry about the inside diameter of my ball modifying it wishing it was bigger or smaller using expander mandrels versus the expander ball has given me better concentricity results on my reloads one of the first places that i heard about using this technique was glenn zedeker's book top grade ammo i've mentioned this book before here on the channel and i think it's a great resource for improving your hand loads if you're interested i'll put a link to it in the description box below but this is one of the first publications that i read that talked about using expander mandrels to improve the concentricity on your reloads this may or may not make sense but your case is actually much stronger pushing down than pulling up if you're pulling that expander ball back through your neck you're more likely to induce misalignment versus pushing the expander mandrel through the case pushing the expander mandrels down through the top of the case really helps maintain the concentricity of your cases when it comes to controlling neck tension in your reloads there are other options there are dies available utilize bushings to set your neck tension however at least from what i've seen most of the bushings are available only in 1 000 increments maybe that's fine for your application and if it is i wouldn't doubt it however these since these are available in half thousands of increments it allows you that finer detail of precision to dial in that neck tension or another possibility that i think some people use is utilizing a slightly smaller bushing than they would to set the neck tension and then coming back through with the appropriate neck diameter expander mandrel to really finely dial that neck tension in exactly where they want it in today's video i don't want to tell you where you have to set your neck tension at i'm going to be doing some more testing on this very soon on the channel so you might want to subscribe if you're interested in that information but when you hear people that are trying to hit targets at long distances neck tension is certainly something they're talking about and consistent neck tension is really what we're talking about because having consistent neck tension from case to case to case is what's going to help keep your standard deviations and extreme spreads low which should make our hand loads more reliable i do want to cover a couple of downsides of these particular options our first downside is these are not carbide they're made of stainless steel if they were carbide they'd certainly be a lot more expensive since they're not carbide we're going to have to be a little bit more careful in making sure they're properly lubed i'm very optimistic they're going to hold up pretty well you're probably going to need some type of lubrication when you're running these through your necks what lubrication is going to be up to you it might depend on how much you're actually using to size it assemblies are going to be slightly discolored you can see i've been using this imperial dry wax to actually set the final dimension on some of my cases so far if i'm not drastically changing the dimension this has worked pretty well if you're performing a pretty drastic adjustment on the case next i certainly wouldn't hesitate to be using some imperial size and eye wax if you're using the imperial dies inside wax just make sure you use a q-tip or at least something to try and remove that wax from the inside of your case next overall i really like these expander mandrels one of the things i think is head and shoulders above the sinclair models is how well these are labeled being able to have such fine adjustment between settings is really going to allow us to dial in that case neck tension that's right for our application we're going to be doing some testing with neck tension here on the channel so make sure you stay tuned you can see these in action how they perform and why you might want to get one i'm not going to tell you have to have the whole kit but you might want to pick up a couple of them just depends on your application overall for as much as i use them they've been a great product i really like them and i'm probably going to end up getting more of them in different calibers if you guys are interested to know how that testing turns out make sure you subscribe the channel the next three videos we talk about on the channel are going to be using these expander manuals to some degree you're going to see all the uses that we use them for and why we really needed them to accomplish the tasks we did so far i'm super happy with them and i can't wait to share the results of that testing with you guys if you're interested more tools that we've looked at here on the channel i'll put a link to a playlist where i've covered several different options for various reloading tools that might improve your reloading process if you're finding this video a little ways down the road check out the description box i'll try and put a link to the playlist that covers the testing that we've done with these expander manuals to show the various results we were able to obtain with them i think we've got some very exciting testing coming up here on the channel so i hope to see you come back next week and until then stay safe in small groups

Channel: Bolt Action Reloading

Views: 61,229

Keywords: 21st century mandrels, expanding necks

Id: TRc4juuh-c8

Length: 8min 25sec (505 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 13 2020