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Is it just me or is winchester having quality control issues with its bulk brass it manufactures. The last five bags of winchester brass that I have purchased have had issues with the flash holes. In each case it looks as if winchester was suffering from some sort of tooling issues when flasholes were punched in 270 win and 223 remington brass. Some pieces of brass have an elongated flash hole and others have flashholes that look similar to a figure 8 with the second hole not being punched all the way through.These bags of brass were from different lots and purchased at different times throughout this past year. I notified winchester of the problem I had with the 270 brass and they sent me two new bags. i have not contacted them concerning the 223 brass. What other manufactures would ya'll recommend buying brass from? How is Remington bulk brass compared to Winchester? | ||
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My recent experiences w/ winchester has been very good for bulk brass. Ive bought .22 Hornet, .222 Remington, and .308 Winchester in the last year and been happy with it. My last experience with remington was a couple of years ago and was very bad. Lwd | |||
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Ive heard of others haveing oval shaped primer flash holes, Ive never had any like that. Just send them back. Ive had some that had neck splits after one load and sent them back and they sent me replacements no problem. Ive had some lapua brass split too. All and all ive had good experience with Winchester brass quality. If I ever get bad primer flash holes , I will just send them back | |||
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I just finished some 30-30 with bulk brass from Remington,flash holes were good but the necks seemed very thin and were beat up pretty bad.I think maybe from shipping.I need to check closer before next purchase I guess. | |||
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Come and see us more often, Lin. We're a fun bunch. We don't bite... | |||
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Send them back. Ask for good stuff not seconds. It's a quality control thing. They will understand. The only easy day is yesterday! | |||
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Hi I just picked up 200 new Winchester .300 Win Mag cases and immediately noticed when priming that the primer pockets were not uniform. Some were nice and tight, as one might expect from 'new' cases and others were quite loose. Very disappointing as I have always been very pleased with Win brass in the past. As a contrast, I also recently got some Norma .300 H&H brass and they were excellent in every way. So I would say Winchester quality control is slipping a bit. Maybe they are just trying to keep up with demand.. Why do they call it common sense, when it is so uncommon?? | |||
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I'll probably get smoked right out of the thread by the Rem bashers but I've always gotten good brass from Remington. Some necks out of round but that's to be expected and easily corrected. Never any issues with primer pockets and flash holes and such. I have two bags of 50 .260 brass that I bought two weeks ago, and a cursory look through them reveals nothing out of the ordinary. It won't compare to Lapua, of course, but you can cull a whole lot of Rem brass before you get to the price of Lapua. And with a little sweat equity of neck turning and such, Rem brass can be brought up to target standards. IMO, if you're shooting a hunting rifle, shooting Lapua brass is an ego thing anyway. One of the domestic brands will take you where you want to go. FWIW, I don't THINK any of the ammo companies are running two case making lines: one for components and one for their ammo making line. So if you're saying their QA is all over the place on their components, then, ergo, their ammo must be all over the place. Aim for the exit hole | |||
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Ummm there are a couple bitters here. ________________________________________________ Maker of The Frankenstud Sling Keeper Proudly made in the USA Acepting all forms of payment | |||
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I've seen quality control vary from Rem primarily and Win secondarily. No such issues for me with Norma, Lapua, and my favorite by a long way, the brass from Nosler. This brass has been EXTREMELY consistent for me. Show on the target face too, which is the ultimate test for me! Try some Nosler and there won't be any monkeying around to get it where you want it! | |||
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Now we come to the question that should have been asked first. What is the intended use for the brass? Aim for the exit hole | |||
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How is is that case manufacturers sometimes get the flash hole off-center? I've experienced that, too, and not with just one brand. Have noticed some looser primer pockets in .243 Nosler brass, also.....not to the point of culling right away, but they probably will not last more than 2 or 3 shots. Some Rem brass split on me at the neck on the first shot which was remedied by annealing the rest of the virgin brass. However, that should not have needed to be done. Have recently loaded PRVI brass. Haven't shot any yet, but it was very consistent with neck tension, primer pocket depth, etc. The only gripe I had was the burrs inside the flash hole. I always take them off anyway, but some were pretty bad. Other than that, it was very nice to work with. As for Winchester, I haven't had any bad experiences which could not be corrected and brass salvaged. Just wish we could once again get what I consider the best of all......IMI! | |||
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Danno, I think those are good questions, and I think it comes down to a couple of factors. First is manufacturing technique. For instance, I have seen a very large variance in the primer pockets and flash holes in Rem, Win and a few other brands, which may be mfg by the same folks for all I know. These mfgs punch the flash holes, where I have read that Norma and Lapua flash holes are drilled. I don't know this to be true, but I have read it often. This difference in mfg technique accounts for a lot of the difference. The second issue is quite simply the MTBF of tooling--related directly to cost. If a mfg tries to stretch the life of their tooling to the max it is by definition more worn and therefore going to produce a product at the edges of acceptable tolerance. This is one reason that higher quality stuff can cost more, they are replacing their tooling more frequently and amortizing the cost over a smaller number of end product. I don't know much about who or where the Nosler brass is actually manufactured, but I have bought it in boxes of 50 which comes sorted by lot, weight and each case is already prepped--chamfered, deburred and I've never seen a burr on a flash-hole which makes me think the flash holes are drilled and not punched on their cases, but they are deburred according to their website. The case mouths are also extremely consistent, the best of any brand I've ever fooled with, which is most of them. I know that to me, having good brass to start with is worth a little extra cost on the front end. | |||
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Wahl, if it was a "little extra cost", you are right but the difference between Lapua and Remington doesn't amount to a "little extra cost". I use Lapua and match prepped Lapua when the need warrents but as I posted, anyone using Lapua to roll hunting ammo is on an ego trip.  Or has money to burn. And to say I cured the Winchester QA problems by going to Lapua is like saying the QA on my Ford was bad so I went to a Diablo. Of course the QA on Lapua is better. It cost 4 times as much. Lapua has recently upgraded it's tooling on the .223 line and now all of the .223 cases carry the head stamp "Lapua Match". FWIW, My experiences with Norma, in three different calibres, has been uniformly bad. The stuff is too soft to handle even near max loads and after just a few reloads, the primer pockets won't even hold a primer. Aim for the exit hole | |||
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Lin, I recently had the same situation with Winchester brass, 25/06 Stepchild NRA Life Member | |||
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Do you have a Laborghini wasbeeman?? | |||
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I wisht I could say yes so I could sell it and buy a new Toyota pick up. We never did determine what the use of the rifle was to be did we? As I said, using Lapua brass for hunting purposes is an ego trip. I have Lapua match brass. I even have a supply of Dakota match brass. As well as a good supply of Remington Bench Rest bullets. That doesn't change the fact that suggesting one change from Winchester to Lapua is facetious. That doesn't mean when I'm hunting, I'm not using a domestic brass. I don't have issues with our domestic brass. If each one was laboured over by some Nordic damsel, I daresay they would be quite a bit more expensive but they're punched out by a machine. And, as several have posted, if you call them up, they will send you some more. It's sort of the cost of paying $25 for 100 rather than $100 for 100. Or you can be a slob like me and toss them in the salvage bucket and get on with your life. Aim for the exit hole | |||
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Good points on the brass, wasbeeman--I agree... I wish you had a spare Lambo too, you could buy several folks a new Toyota pickup--which are damn nice BTW. I think the sending the funky brass back to Win is a good idea. | |||
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Thanks for your replies everyone. I think I will prep and reload one bag to see if their are any negative effects on accuracy. The other bag will be sent back to Winchester. | |||
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We've had some fun with this thread, Lin Pope. Please let us know how it works out. Thx Aim for the exit hole | |||
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Buy American People! Your kids and grandkids future depends on it! | |||
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The American car companies did it to themselves. The arrogant disregard and greed of the unions (which continues) and the ignorance and greed of the management (which continues) is exceeded only by the arrogance and greed of the current presidential administration. Union Made and Buy American has become a farce. (in many cases)  Aim for the exit hole | |||
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A couple of years ago I bought some 243 Winchester cases in a 100 lot bag and found problems with the flash holes and some dented cases. I sent back only the damaged cases to Winchester and they in return sent back coupons good for 200 cases of replacement brass to be used at any retailer. I was completely satisfied with their service center. I have had some bad luck with Remington 22 lr Golden Bullets and sent back the used remainder to Remington to be told that everything was "within specs". I will not buy any Remington Ammo again but will buy their rifles. | |||
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Back in the day, I bought a loaded chevy crew cab(1973)Cheyenne and proved to have numerous defects to include swallowing a quart of oil every 250 miles(454)anyway I wrote a full page of defects on this truck and when I showed this to the service manager he read it and looked me in the eye and said" fella, what do you think you've got here, a Mercedes" That was the last GM for me. I have hauled steel into most of the big 3 plants in the midwest and most of the work force was screwing off in some form, the same went on in the steel mills. This is coming from a retired Teamster who has worked on a percentage basis from the start. They thought they were doing the screwing but guess what. I've seen UAW people go to lunch and pound down 6 beers and punch in on time, and in one case had a 6 pk to put in his locker. I could go on but for what? NRA Life Member | |||
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Yup! Don't get me started on GMC. Flying in a private jet to beg for money from the taxpayers of the United States. Now that is really what you call "out of the loop".Aim for the exit hole | |||
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The Accurate Reloading Forums THE ACCURATE RELOADING.COM FORUMS Guns, Politics, Gunsmithing & Reloading Reloading Issues with Winchester Brass
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