Hornady Concentricity Tool

KYHillChick was looking for that special gift that says how much she loves her favorite outdoorsman, and lookee what I found on a flash sale at Natchez Shooters Supply.

This is the Hornady Lock-N-Load Concentricity Tool. What the hell is that?

Look, I’m no expert on this. However, I have been on 24HourCampfire.com particularly on the Ask The Gunwriter’s section for quite a while now. John Barsness (Mule Deer) is a real wiz at this sort of thing. He and the other rifle looney glitterati agree that after you’ve conquered the basics of rifle reloading and gone as down the bunny hole as far as annealing and neck-sizing and all that gack, the white rabbit is going to point towards runout as the next aspect to tackle.

What is runout? In a word “wobble.” Runout is the property of a seated bullet to be askew in relation to the chamber. If you seat your bullets crooked, you have more runout. If you seat them straighter, they tend to group into a tighter pattern, group more consistently and leave you with fewer fliers. We’re talking just a gnat’s testicle either way, so it is not a big deal to a beginner. .001″ to .002″ off-center is considered good. If your runout is more than that, it is definitely a problem.

For the past couple of years, I’ve been playing with Lee Collet Neck Sizing Dies for several of my deer hunting chamberings.

My first experiment was with 8X57 Mauser in the Mauser from Hell. I was pleasantly surprised to see my groups go from marginal to minuscule. The Lee Collet Die attacks runout in a different way. When the case is sized, the Lee die runs a big mandrel down through the case and when you bear down on the downward stroke, the neck is set dead square. That sold me on the concept– another tip I found on the Campfire and also in John Barsness book The Big Book of Gun Gack
which I reviewed a while back.

I’m not going to claim any major breakthroughs yet, but the performance of the Mauser from Hell points to old Mule Deer being right. I’ll take his word on runout being an issue. I did not take his advice wholly. The consensus opinion on the ‘Campfire is that the RCBS or Sinclair units are better for measuring runout. However, there is no means to correct the problem without the TruTool-Equipment.com TruAngle Cartridge Run-Out Correction Tool.

TruAngle Cartridge Run-Out Correction Tool.

However, when you add up the costs of the concentricity gauges and the Tru-Too straightener, you’re quickly north of $200. I found the Hornady device on a flash sale at Natchez Shooters Supply for $89. Don’t look now. It’s long gone. However, the Hornady device is normally the cheapest way to go, and it does a passable job of at least letting you know if you have a runout problem with your rounds.

I gave the device a cursory test on the kitchen table this morning after unboxing it. It was able to detect a .001″ to .003″ level of runout on the 8X57 rounds and that it was able to remove better than half of that using the adjuster. For a hunting round, that’s pretty darn good.

I want to also give a shout-out to Folically Challenged regarding all this. On our ride back from Georgia we were talking about runout. He’s got the RCBS unit and the Tru-Tool. He was my inspiration for thinking about runout again. I also want to plug:

They sold KYHillChick my RCBS Supreme Master Reloading Kit back in 2000, and they still have one of the lowest prices out there on it and a bunch of other reloading supplies.

Here is a dandy Youtube on the Hornady Concentricity Tool.