While I was cleaning some brass for my 2506 today, I noticed that the majority of the flash holes were off center. The brass is remington with R.P. stamped on the case head. Is this a normal occurance that I have not noticed before, or is this a bad lot of brass. Will this affect the accuracy any and should I discard the brass?
Ballistic Engineer Bill Davis Jr of Tioga Engineering tested Off-Centered Flash holes for accuracy versus Centered Flash Holes and published his finding is American Rifleman (int he early 80's IIRC). He found that there was not any statistically significant difference in accuracy.
On the practical side, you might find more difficulty depriming those cases with off-centered holes because the flash holes might not line up properly with the decapping pin.
Posts: 192 | Location: USA | Registered: 29 January 2003
I bent the decapping pin on my 303 british dies decapping federal rounds. Now if the flash hole is off centered to th eother side i almost have to rotate teh case to get it to decap!
As the other guys have said, it should cause no problems.
I did my own little study last year just because I noted the flash holes of some of my .223 Remington brass to be off center quite a bit.
These were military cases and some of them were off center pretty bad. So, I loaded up a bunch of off center cases and a bunch of well centered cases and went to the range.
After firing 60 rounds, shooting groups of 5 at 100 yards, I could tell no difference. Now this is no bench rest rifle, it is a stock Remington 700 BDL and the average group was about an even inch. But, there was no difference in the centered or off centered flash hole groups. Not unless you can shoot well enough to utilize a difference of 0.10 inches on average.
Unless the cases are off center enough to break you decapping pin, I would not worry about it. On the other hand, brass is not that expensive, if you are worried, just throw it.
RF
Posts: 1220 | Location: Hanford, CA, USA | Registered: 12 November 2000
I have also found that off center flash holes seem to be of no measurable consequence to accuracy for any of us except the bench rest crowd. That being said, I have found that accuracy is very noticeably affected buy the uniformity of the flash hole! Klink in the link below for more...
I bought 100 pieces of RP 257 Roberts cases from Blue Star. About 30 or 40 of the cases had flash holes so far off center they wouldn't accept a decapping pin. I sent them to Remington and got a check that would pay for nearly 500 new cases. You might send them back if you have any doubts.
Normally, I try to never say anything good about Remington, but this time I have to.
Posts: 5052 | Location: Muletown | Registered: 07 September 2001
