Who make the best brass in these calibers?

Norma makes 270 and 300 WSM brass. It's nicer than Winchester.

I was just going to post about 300 WSM brass, so this is great timing.

I'm looking for some W-W brass to try for my 300 WSM M70 Fwt, because the Norma stuff I paid 2X as much for seems to be a little soft, or something. I'm at least two grains under published max, with velocities to match, and it's a real battle to get the bolt open. My starting loads were fine, but as I progressed through my load workups, that bolt got stickier and stickier. There are no marks on the case head, or flattened primers, or any of the other "classic" signs of excess pressure (which we are now learning aren't really trustworthy pressure signs, anyhow), so, I'm a little more confused than normal .

May be a rough chamber.

Think I'll try some W-W brass and see what happens.

R-WEST

RWEST, my last 300 WSM did the same thing (stainless M70) but with Win brass... I found a sticky spot in the chamber... bum chamber.

Brad, what do you mean by a "sticky spot". How did you find it and what did you do to fix it?

Thanks

Hi Brad. I couldn't figure out how to find any bad spots in there (hard to see down in there without a borescope), so, I tried polishing the heck out of it with a tight patch loaded up with Iosso bore cleaner.

I also picked up a batch of W-W brass today to try. I read on one of the forums that another guy had problems with softish Norma brass; he got a lot of primer pocket expansion with fairly mild loads. Norma brass has the rep for highest quality, and the ones I have sure do look/feel nice, with only 1 or 1.5 grains weight variation in 100 cases, so, we'll see.

R-WEST

hey R-west,
I don't know if the problem you are experienceing is identical to mine but it sure sounds like it.
I recently took delivery on a Kimber 8400 in 300 WSM. I immediately preped the cases and started breaking in the barrell. The first thing I noticed was what you described. A bolt that was very hard to open or close. The problem was that I had not screwed down the sizing die down enough to take the spring out and bump the shoulder back. Consequently the bolt was hard to open and close. What a friend told me to do was to screw the sizing die down until it contacted the shell holder, then back off on the lever and screw the sizing die down a fraction of a turn. Lube your brass,size the case and try it in your rifle. Continue screwing the sizing die down until you get to the point where your bolt will open and close easily on the sized brass.

Hi Geedubya - My problem isn't closing the bolt, just opening it after warmer than starting loads.
I prepped a bunch of W-W stuff tonite, so I'll load up a bunch to try, and see what's what.

One thing I did notice is the W-W brass averages 20 grains lighter than the Norma brass (230 gn avg. vs. 250 gn for Norma).

R-WEST