I've always used winchester brass, but am putting together a 35 whelen. Don't think Winchester ever made whelen brass. Is there any current new whelen brass that I should avoid? thanks

Hornady Norma Nosler all good

I use all Remington. No unusual problems or issues.

Here's a link to a discussion on a problem I had with Remington brass in a 35 Whelan. I'd recommend you steer clear of Remington brass.

http://forums.accuratereloadin...421090891#9421090891

Yes the older RP 35 Whelen brass was under size, with a large chamber you have issues.

quote:

Originally posted by Labman:
Here's a link to a discussion on a problem I had with Remington brass in a 35 Whelan. I'd recommend you steer clear of Remington brass.

http://forums.accuratereloadin...421090891#9421090891

Weird. I've never had an issue with it out of either of my Whelen rifles. I have a 700 Classic and an 1895 Browning.

I have had great results using Norma brass. Very consistent.

Resize military 30-06, like Whelen did.

I have a Whelen AI, and starting with factory Remington nickel plated Whelen brass I fire-form to the improved chamber with 250 gr lead gaschecked bullet over 32 gr of A5744. I subsequently did a load workup with 40 cases and from starting to max loads did ten reloads with the same cases. Primer pockets still tight, and no splits or failures of any kind. Good brass.

I didn't know that anyone used anything other than necked-up .30-06 brass (of his brand of choice) for the .35 Whelen. Anyway, no one did for the first forty or so years it was around.

For the first 40 or so years of the Whelen, the airlines didn't care about the headstamps on your ammo.

There is absolutely no need to buy expensive 35 Whelen brass. I am fortunate , from shooting XTC competitions for decades, with Garands and M1a's, to have 5 gallon buckets of LC 30-06. Instead of buying new 35 Whelen brass, I neck sized my 30-06 brass up. I did have an unacceptable number of case neck cracks, so the next thing I did, was to anneal the necked up brass, and it worked great:



I did have a few cases that were over annealed, but a couple of additional passes through the sizing die, they were good to go. Now I heat the case neck and drop it immediately if I see any orange or red. I try to keep the temperature below red. After annealing my case loss due to case neck cracking was negligible.

In this rifle:



Now these cases




are once fired 30-06 that have been necked up, but not yet fireformed. The base to shoulder distance has not been matched to the chamber. So, I grease the hell out of the cases. This is a practice that World Champion Bench rest shooters do when fireforming. If the cases were fired dry, the case neck would grab the chamber walls, fixing the case in place, and then, as pressure increased, the case body would have to stretch to the bolt face, reducing the side wall thickness, creating incipient case head separations, shortening the life of the case.

Such as what happened to this case:



or these:



or the top case in this picture:



My lubricated cases come out stress free and perfectly fireformed to the chamber. All I have to do is then slightly bump the shoulder back, and I use case gages to determine just how much I am moving the shoulder back:



I do recommend with the 35 Whelen not pushing the shoulder back more than 0.003". I have had misfires with the 35 Whelen and what I did was size the cases so that there was no clearance when the bolt is in battery, basically I have zero clearance between the bolt face and the sized case. I might have 0.001" or so, but it is not much. I also use federal primers as they are the most sensitive primers on the market. That combination has reduced misfires to nothing. I also do not recommend ball powders as they are hard to ignite in cold weather.

I have used R-P brass in my Whelen for the past 25+ years with no problems what so ever. This is with full power hunting loads and reduced cast bullet plinking loads. I have also run .30-06 brass thru my Whelen dies and used these cases for cast bullet plinking loads. I use Winchester standard large rifle primers exclusively, IMR 4064 for Jacketed bullet loads mostly 225 grain Sierra or Nosler and Unique with cast bullets from 200 to 225 grains. Tried lots of different powder/bullet combinations in extensive load development and range testing and my go to load is IMR 4064 with 225 grain Sierra or Nosler bullets.

I use Norma and Nosler brass, no problems with either. I use the Redding competition shellholder set to insure I don't push the shoulder back when I resize. I also tend to use 4064 and Sierra 225 as my main loads.