Mark,
Sounds fine - whatever works to get the tightest groups - for me, case life is important but secondary.
I understand you use a Redding body die and do the necks with a Lee collet. Your bullet grip is .002" and while half mine we both know this not the full story. Grip also depends on how elastic (ductile) those Starline cases are, and how much shank is in contact. Bearing in mind case elasticity slowly weakens as it hardens with each shot. Annealing restores some elasticity however it's not really needed. You'll probably discard the case long before it needs annealing.
You mention crimping the rounds which is a sure fire way of keeping the bullet from shifting in an auto loader. Doesn't matter then how much the bullet is held by the neck prior to crimping. Crimping is an extra step in the loading process however, and Lee crimp dies tend to focus their crimp at the case mouth. You can see the thin visible chomp it leaves. Redding's taper crimp die is more forgiving on necks as it squeezes the whole neck, not just mauling the mouth.
As for whether crimping is better than gripping...I ran a test a while back shooting groups with each and found no difference in precision. Given this, as crimping is an extra step I stopped doing it and just hold the bullet with as much grip as possible. I anneal so this helps keep them elastic for longer. The Grendel seems a lot more forgiving with case life than the larger 6.5x47 calibre. With 6.5x47 the primer pockets blow out after a few shots, but not the Grendel - it just 'keeps on keeping on'.
What you could do is check your Lee CD grip without adding a crimp. Load your brass as normal, but not crimp. Then load them into the AR letting the BCG feed and slam into battery from the mag. Then manually eject without firing. Measure how much (if any) the bullet has shifted. If it doesn't shift then there's no need to crimp. To make sure the crimp isn't influencing group size you can fire them with and without the crimp.
Here's the evidence that in my case crimping and not crimping gives equal precision. If anything, not crimping yields slightly better results on target, but not by much. 4rd groups at 100 in MOA, from a bench rested Lilja barrel. Crimping was with a Redding taper crimp:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]20012[/ATTACH]
Sounds fine - whatever works to get the tightest groups - for me, case life is important but secondary.
I understand you use a Redding body die and do the necks with a Lee collet. Your bullet grip is .002" and while half mine we both know this not the full story. Grip also depends on how elastic (ductile) those Starline cases are, and how much shank is in contact. Bearing in mind case elasticity slowly weakens as it hardens with each shot. Annealing restores some elasticity however it's not really needed. You'll probably discard the case long before it needs annealing.
You mention crimping the rounds which is a sure fire way of keeping the bullet from shifting in an auto loader. Doesn't matter then how much the bullet is held by the neck prior to crimping. Crimping is an extra step in the loading process however, and Lee crimp dies tend to focus their crimp at the case mouth. You can see the thin visible chomp it leaves. Redding's taper crimp die is more forgiving on necks as it squeezes the whole neck, not just mauling the mouth.
As for whether crimping is better than gripping...I ran a test a while back shooting groups with each and found no difference in precision. Given this, as crimping is an extra step I stopped doing it and just hold the bullet with as much grip as possible. I anneal so this helps keep them elastic for longer. The Grendel seems a lot more forgiving with case life than the larger 6.5x47 calibre. With 6.5x47 the primer pockets blow out after a few shots, but not the Grendel - it just 'keeps on keeping on'.
What you could do is check your Lee CD grip without adding a crimp. Load your brass as normal, but not crimp. Then load them into the AR letting the BCG feed and slam into battery from the mag. Then manually eject without firing. Measure how much (if any) the bullet has shifted. If it doesn't shift then there's no need to crimp. To make sure the crimp isn't influencing group size you can fire them with and without the crimp.
Here's the evidence that in my case crimping and not crimping gives equal precision. If anything, not crimping yields slightly better results on target, but not by much. 4rd groups at 100 in MOA, from a bench rested Lilja barrel. Crimping was with a Redding taper crimp:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]20012[/ATTACH]