My apologies if this is a subject which has been hashed out previously, but it's a current issue for me, and I'd appreciate some feedback. I'm about to begin loading for my Cooper M21 which is being rebarrelled from .221 FB to 6X45. My inclination, at this point, is to buy Win brass and prep it. I'd be interested in hearing from some of you may have worked with the Lapua or Nosler brass, and whether you'd recommend going that more expensive route? Thanks, George

George,If it's a bechrest for compition I would use the lapua.
Winchester as is most of the commercial brass is very good. Its mostly in the prep and how you keep it sorted form number of firings.
I try to keep my brass in lot of 50.
Dave

I have not done anything with 6x47, but I have ~8,000 pieces of .223 brass.

It is all crap.
All the Lapua I have bought is just as bad.

Lapua takes less prep time for:
1) flash hole
2) chamfer inside the mouth
3) chamfer outside the mouth
4) primer pocket de crimp

But the 600 pound gorilla is the case neck wall thickness runout. This can add .00150" eccentricity at the ogive, and the only way to get rid of it is to turn the neck.

That is even after fire forming and sizing with a FL die with the neck lapped out to .002" under. The concentricity at the outside of the neck will be only .00025" off, but the inside of the neck is .00150" off.

So what are you going to do?
1) turn the necks?
2) live with .0015" run out at the ogive?

The brand of brass will not matter.

just my opinion.....when it comes to brass.....cheap is good!

I have several thousand milsurp brass I got for .04 each and when it comes to killing prairie dogs it just works!

I load it the same as the Hornady brass, Winchester and Remington.....and can not tell the difference...

I did see some Lapua brass recently and it does look nice.....but IMO overpriced compared to my options!

It always comes down to "what are you gonna do with the rifle/brass"????? If you're gonna shot varmints and casual paper, you don't need a "bench rest" prep to your brass, nor Lapua brass for that matter. Lapua brass is the best IMO but win/rem/fed/etc can be brought up to the same specs with a little sweat equity preparations.
As posted, at $.04 per case for 1x GI brass, you can cull a whole lot before you get to the price of Lapua.
Colour me curious: Where did you find Lapua brass with a mil crimp??

If economy is a concern, you might try some Guatemalan military brass from Widener's
It seems like pretty good quality, and has the added feature of the smaller flash holes, about the same size as .22 PPC. RCBS was nice enough to send me a .22 PPC decapping unit so I could deprime my future loads without reaming the flash hole with my oversized decapping pin that came on my RCBS neck sizing die. Even then, so far over 50 of my initial order of 500 cases are going to have to have the flash holes drilled out to avoid pulling the .22 PPC decpping pin out of the unit. I will be interested to see how the "small flash hole" loads shoot compared to the standard size flash hole.

quote:

Lapua takes less prep time for:
1) flash hole
2) chamfer inside the mouth
3) chamfer outside the mouth
4) primer pocket de crimp

quote:

Originally posted by stillbeeman:

Colour me curious: Where did you find Lapua brass with a mil crimp??

It takes less time because it takes no time.
Lapua is commercial brass.
Military crimped brass is for dirty hot chambers that might see 90,000 psi and the military does not want a jam from a primer falling out.

quote:

Originally posted by Huckleberry Finn:

Jim said bees wouldn't sting idiots; but I didn't believe that, be- cause I had tried them lots of times myself, and they wouldn't sting me.

I recently purchased some winchester .223 brass and was quite impressed with it for mass market brass. It was surprisingly uniform. However, you might want to spend a bit more if this is going to be a competition gun. I have been very impressed with the Nosler brass in the larger calibers, but I haven't used it in .223.

How many pieces do you need? If you want 500, then the Nosler is going to be a bit pricey.

LWD