Quote Originally Posted by redman View Post
Not sure I know what you mean by "Shilen barrel has a tight neck and I am not sure this will work".
From Shilen
Products::Rifle Barrels::Chambers

Drawing upon 35 years of close involvement in the demanding sport of bench rest competition, we possess a unique understanding of the importance of a carefully aligned, precise chamber. Our chambers are painstakingly cut to a singular standard of machining excellence, because without an absolutely true chamber, no rifle will shoot to its full potential. Dimensional accuracy is also critical in every other step in the barrel-fitting process. Everything must be just right.
We are chambering and fitting Shilen barrels for the following cartridges. Please note that the dimensions in parentheses indicate special neck diameters. These are either "tight necks", which require turning case necks, or "minimum necks", which may or may not require neck-turning. If you have questions, please contact us for recommendations.

The neck on the Shilen barrel(223AI) is .252 and my Speer reloading manual shows the standard 223 brass is .253 when loaded. Maybe I'm making to much of this, but that says to me that it won't work. Case necks need to be turned.


Quote Originally Posted by scope eye View Post
The thing about fire forming with blanks, is that it still erodes the throat of your barrel just as if you fired off a round, so if you are going to wear out the barrel you might as well get use out of it, you lose approx 10% FPS velocity when fire forming with a live round, but have yet to see any accuracy loss when doing so.

Tanks Dean
I had fully intended to fire form brass by just firing factory loaded cartridges in the AI chamber. Is that wrong?