Outside of the expensive Lapua, which of the makers of component brass are most likely to make the best product these days? Winchester? Remington? Hornady? Norma? What are your favorites, especially if you are looking for brass for long-range target loads?

I really can't prove my choice is the best, but for 7mm Remington Magnum I use Remington brass, and for .300 Winchester Magnum I use Winchester brass.

IMO it's gotta be Remington.

Their Brass is tougher than Win and Hornady but, Federal isn't too bad. The reason I stay away from Federal is because their primer pockets are way too loose unless you use Federal primers.

Good Luck!

Reloader

I don't think you will find a lot of difference in quality between the American brass manufacturers overall.

Both the 7mm RM and .300 WM have been around a long time so who know how old the tooling is that is used to create the brass?

I sort my cases for neck concentricity and it really seems to be the luck of the draw (pun intended). I used to buy bulk Remington brass from Midway and got anywhere from a 15 to 25% rejection rate, i.e. necks with thickness variation greater than .001" in the .30-06 and .270 cases.

Now I buy the 50 count bags from Winchester because the local store carries Winchester and price is about the same without the shipping charge. 200 cases of Winchester brand .270 Winchester brass were very good, 200 cases of Winchester brand .300 WM were terrible - about a 50% rejection rate. 200 cases of Winchester 7mm-08 brass were great - only about a 10% rejection rate.

I have read that Remington brass is thicker than Winchester but have never compared directly by weighing. Moot point to me - doesn't seem like a few ten thousandths or even thousandths more brass in the case wall is going to save me from an excessive overload, so I load fairly conservatively with either brand. You can supposedly get more powder in a Winchester case, but again, a moot point because of the same reason - conservative reloading practices to begin with.

For target loads any brand will be well prepared - trimmed, sorted for concentricity, weighed, flash holes uniformed, splashed with holy water, whatever turns you on. So I don't see any difference there unless the rejection rate is extremely skewed toward one brand or another, and as shown above that can vary widely within a brand name.

Ya pays yer money and ya takes yer chances.

i'll answer from a slightly different perspective.. all answers are "in general"

federal brass is the softest of the americans

Winchester is the thinest, and give a grain or 2 more h20 capacity. this is THE best brass for 257 roberts, if you can get the +p brass

remington tends to have a good consistant LENGTH

hornady tends to have the best weight consistantcy, assuming "non match" ammo

other than 257roberts, I am indifferent to the CHOICE of rem, win, or hornady... I only use fed for 300 win... bc I have a zillion of them.

jeffe

I have been using the New Hornady brass this year and found it is expensive but very consistant. I would rate it with Lapua for quality.Which I know is saying a lot.

I shoot 7mm Rem. Mag. in a T/C Encore, I use 358 Norma brass to fire form, have one lot of 20 cases that have 22 firings under their belts, (pun intended), stuff works great. Encores have a bad habit of having headspace problems, chambers cut too deep to be able to headspace on the shoulder of new brass, and the belt cut is too deep to allow the belt to keep the brass even with the end of the barrel, or out to where there is proper headspace related to frame to barrel gap. Tried necking up U.S. brass, then sizing with the 7mm die, R-P worked best for that, but still did not last as long as the Norma.

I've found differences in Winchester brass quality of late that I hadn't experienced before. It seems to be softer than Remington by quite a bit. On firing of some I bought in 6mm Remington and had very noticable primer pocket expansion to the point that some primers fell out on the second try. In the past I preferred Winchester over Remington and Federal over both. Now I think I'm going to try some of the Nosler brass and see if it's as good as I've heard and move Winchester way down the list.

I agree with some of the previous posts about Winchester brass having a higher capacity. That being said I bought a bag of 250 .243 Winchester cases and found a 3.2% defective rate in the cases. Winchester was good about providing a coupon for a free bag of 25 replacements,

quote:

Originally posted by Bill/Oregon:
Outside of the expensive Lapua, which of the makers of component brass are most likely to make the best product these days? Winchester? Remington? Hornady? Norma? What are your favorites, especially if you are looking for brass for long-range target loads?

I have used Rem., Win., and Norma brass in these calibers. I see no real advantage to any one of them over the others.

quote:

Originally posted by chundoo:
I've found differences in Winchester brass quality of late that I hadn't experienced before. It seems to be softer than Remington by quite a bit. On firing of some I bought in 6mm Remington and had very noticable primer pocket expansion to the point that some primers fell out on the second try. In the past I preferred Winchester over Remington and Federal over both. Now I think I'm going to try some of the Nosler brass and see if it's as good as I've heard and move Winchester way down the list.

This is interesting, because the reverse was once the case, with Norma being softer yet......