I am going to try to neck size some brass and see if that works better for me than full length resizing, but I can’t find any instructions on how to set one up. Anyone have any suggestions on how to set up a Hornady neck sizing die #046043 bushing? Does it even need a bushing?
Pat, I use the Redding bushing dies, so may be a little different but shouldn’t be that much different.
GENERALLY speaking with bushing dies, and neck sizing:
Set up the die the same as a regular die.
Screw the die in till it allows the press to fully size the case.
Pick the size bushing (yes you need a bushing) you want to use.
Picking the bushing is based on measuring the loaded diameter of the neck on the cartridge. So, I load 308 with a bushing sometimes. The chamber on my rifle is a .342 neck, I use a bushing that is a .338, which allows for 5 thousandths of resizing back down from the loaded cartridge. Some people get into only sizing down by 2 thousandths, so up to you. The discussion on that is the less you size the brass up and down between firings, the longer your brass will last and the neck keeps constant tension. I have found for my purposes that the 5 thousandths works across different rifles and so I just use that as a base line for everything.
Different brass will have different thickness also, so the bushing size drives the neck tension. Lapua, Federal, Norma tend to be thicker in wall thickness of the necks, so less sizing with a bushing is required to get them to grip the bullet; Winchester, Hornady are thinner and you would have to size them down more to get a good grip on a bullet. With those brass types, I have stuck with a .332, which sizes it down substantially, but have found that after 4-5 firings, if I try to use a .338 with less sizing, the case will not grip the bullet tight enough to keep it from moving.
Hope this helps, but I am sure there is a Hornady video on youtube that will explain this better than I did, but also will give you the visual.
There are other aspects of using bushings than come up, and I am sure some of the more anal retentive reloaders will pop up about those items, but I lean more towards loading and shooting for hunting than fretting over every single aspect of reloading. I did that for a while, but unless your shooting benchrest (which I did) then the gains were minimal for hunting applications.
Good luck