I'm kind of new to reloading, my father in law and I went in on this whole re loading deal. Well I built the bench with his help in my basement, and he bought all the equipment. Great deal for me I know.

We shoot at Camp Perry at the EIC matches every year, then on wednesday nights locally. We are re-loading for precision as well as cost effectiveness.

We're working up a load right now, so I decided to clean, decap, and primer pocket ream 1,000 pieces of brass. The lake city federal .223 stuff.

I've heard about weighing brass so I decided to try it.

Here's the question:

Out of 100 pieces of brass, ~75 of them fall between 95.1 and 96.1 grains. Most of the brass is a little heavier, some is a little lighter.

I can live with that 1.1 grain window, but what's your opinion.

Is that 1.1 grain window too large, or could I doulbe it and not notice a difference?

If you wanted to be really anal you could take a sharpie and mark the weight of each case on each one and sort them in order of weight.
Input the data into Excel and graph the data.
Any outliers could be used for fouling shots.
If I really am determined to be anal I would get about 250 cases of the same lot and sort them.
I would probably wind up with a lot of 100 of the heavier cases and a lot of 100 of the lighter cases. Both of these lots would be very uniform. Then I would have 50 cases that are split between the very heaviest and the lighest. I would work up my loads with the heavy brass. The left overs would be used for spares or sold.

A more practical way to deal with it if you are not shooting a serious benchrest rifle is to sort your brass looking for a few really bad ones and use them for foulers.

But finally keep the following in mind.
You expect to use a uniform charge of powder of ±? grains.
How uniform do you expect to be with the powder charge? The powder takes up space in the case and affects pressure by both volume and energy content.
Brass is 8 times heavier than most rifle powders per unit volume. Therefore 1 grain weight of brass takes up 1/8 grain volume of powder.
That is not much.

+/- .5gr works very well in .223 cases. Worrying about much less than that gets you into the law of diminishing (or no) returns.

Weighing cases is a MASSIVE waste of time. Minor extractor groove dimensional variations (well within tolerance mind you) will cause a case weight variance of far more than +/- 1.1 grains! But it is your time so if want to waste have at it.

I use a 5% rule of thumb for culling brass and bullets for match loads. That would be an acceptable variance of 4.777 grains for a 95.5 grain case median (not average) weight. Using Lapua brass or other premium brass and hand made bullets eliminates 98% of the culls. You might also want to check for neck wall thickness (which can reveal case variation as well) which would be a much more likely cause of fliers than case weight in that particular application. I use the 5% rule there as well. In 12 lots of LC brass I have checked I found a lot more thickness variation that was outside my 5% than weight. I stopped using it except for practice. People told me but I had to try it for myself..........

quote:

But finally keep the following in mind.
You expect to use a uniform charge of powder of ±? grains.
How uniform do you expect to be with the powder charge?

With the method I've been practicing I can throw charges with a standard deviation of about .162 grains. See my father in law works at AFIT, the Air Force Institute of Technology, he has access to some pretty high end scales. We've come a long way in refining our methods. I understand that 1 grain here is nothing compared to a grain there. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't do your best to keep constant that grain here. If you follow me.

I firmly believe brass preparation is THE key to accuracy and weighing brass is a part of that process. Of course, closer weight range is better but I could live with the 1.1 gr window. An important element is the mental aspect of what you believe is working. Perform a test of the 1-gr spread and a 2-gr spread and see if it makes a difference to you. Shot to shot consistency is what we are after and it starts with brass prep.

I agree. I just neck-size all new brass, trim to standard and reload.

quote:

Originally posted by ScottS:
Weighing cases is a MASSIVE waste of time. Minor extractor groove dimensional variations (well within tolerance mind you) will cause a case weight variance of far more than +/- 1.1 grains! But it is your time so if want to waste have at it.

quote:

Originally posted by Buliwyf:
I firmly believe brass preparation is THE key to accuracy and weighing brass is a part of that process.

I gotta agree. There are a whole lot of variables in the accuracy equation, and case prep is a major one. I've been paying far more attention to case prep the last few years and accuracy has improved. Weighing cases is one of the things I do now that I didn't do previously, and I think groups I shoot now are much better than before as a result.

Hey Dave, You are getting some good responses. And I agree with your approach, except you need to go on and Weight-Sort all of them.

I do something similar to what SR4759 mentioned about marking the Cases, except I put a small piece of 3M Transparent Tape on the Case and Ink Pen the weight on it. If you use a different Tape, it might leave a glue residue. And writing directly onto the Case creates a possibility that the Marker you use has Ammonia in the Ink, which you do not want on the Case.

Making the Chart SR4759 mentioned allows you to set down and segregate the Cases any way you desire. A large quantity of my Lots all weigh the exact same amount. The quantity of Cases in a Lot does not need to be the exact same amount. You may end up needing to toss a Case out of the Lot for some reason.

Once you have the Lots the way you want them, Fire Form the Cases and pay attention to any Fliers. If a Case gives you an un-expected Flier, mark it or remove it from the Lot.

Best of luck to you all.

quote:

Originally posted by Hot Core:
Once you have the Lots the way you want them, Fire Form the Cases and pay attention to any Fliers. If a Case gives you an un-expected Flier, mark it or remove it from the Lot.
Best of luck to you all.

+1
This is a good practice.

muck

Being a varmint shooter is soooooo much easier!!!!

and here I thought I was going the extra mile, by just sorting by manufacturer and load and shoot...

In the field and at some shooting disciplines you’ll find you or the rifle have more of an effect on accuracy then the variation in brass, powder charge, or bullet. If you can hold prone with perfect ammo at 600, with no wind or pressure, a 5" group and using brass with a 5% variation in wgt or capasicity gives a resulting 5% change in group size (unlikely) will you notice it? Would it cost you a high power match? Can shoot to this degree of finesse every time? Would it cause a miss on a P-Dog at this range?
Sometimes the result doesn’t justify the extra work IMO. Now in BR where the results of 0.0001” can make or break you……..
YMMV

I agree with sea fire being a varmint shooter is so much easier. I use to turn necks weigh cases ect. Way to time comsuming now. I size them load them and go at it.

Enter your individual weights into a spreadsheet. Get the Average (AVG) and Standard Deviation (SD). Add and subtract 3 SD's to and from the AVG. These two parameters define the capability of the manufacturing process. Any individual pieces of brass whose weights are outside of these limits display some variation in the process. Whether the variation has any influence on accuracy is indeterminate. What does make a difference to accuracy is case volume. Take any deviates and measure the volume. Measure the volume of a few pieces of standard brass (within the limits of the process). See how much variation there is between these two groups. Make a judgment call on what you want to do with the deviates. You can load the deviates and shoot them in a separate group. Compare the results to the results of your standard brass. Make a judgment call regarding the value of weighing brass.

The simple alternative (already suggested) is to segregate the obvious deviates without regard to any limiting parameter (1 grain, etc.).