Got a little bit of an issue. I have always only loaded brass that was same manufacturer, and came from the same box. I load for my brothers 300WSM, and no matter how hard I press him to keep up with brass, he always brings me a box with 16-19 pieces. I now have two (partial) boxes of federal one with 19, one with 17. One box has a headstamp -FC- and the other just FC. I haven't had a chance to weigh them yet, but should I just pull from the other to make a box of 20?

If you are reloading brass from factory cartridges which were obtained over a period of time, then it is almost impossible to assure that you are loading brass which is all from the same lot -- even if the headstamps appear identical. But brass from mixed lots of the same manufacture tends to be more consistent with itself than mixed brass from mulitple manufacturers.

After trimming to a consistent length, if the two lots of brass from the same manufacturer are reasonably close in average weight, then you will likely notice no difference in mixing them. I would actually be a bit more worried about them being consistent in head hardness and neck anneal, but this is something that is not simple to measure.

That was my point, I don't like mixing even the same manufacturer if I know they came from a different box of factory ammunition. I know lot to lot there are differences in components, but gets me wondering. It's just for a hunting load so I'm kinda feeling it;s not going to be a big deal.

Just as a data point, I bought 120 pieces of once fired Nickel Winchester 300 WSM brass from another AR member right at a year ago. All were nickel and once fired. I pulled them out of their respective boxes and tumbled them. End of keeping each box separate... period.

After full length re-sizing, trimming to manual specified length, de-burring flash holes and reloading an arbitrary powder charge and projectile, I would say having over half of the same cases from the same box is pretty remote. But four rounds test fired in the rifle shot to 1/2" @ 100. I would think for a hunting load that is plenty good.

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But brass from mixed lots of the same manufacture tends to be more consistent with itself than mixed brass from mulitple manufacturers.

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It's just for a hunting load so I'm kinda feeling it;s not going to be a big deal.

Or you could buy an excess quantity of the same manufacturer's brass from the same retailer at one time and then weight sort it discarding the outliers. But for a hunting load there's lots better things to do with your time.

LWD

I have been mixing brass from the same mfgr forever. Unless you are into very competitive target shooting, in my opinion, its not an issue.

For hunting purposes I've never noticed any problems, and I'm rather anal about my loads. I check weigh a sample of each and if they weigh fairly close ( about 5 grs. or so ) I load 'em up. I anneal, trim and chamfer as part of my brass prep.

I would think that after processing the brass as detailed above you should be good to go for hunting purposes.

When loading max amounts of powder in a case I have found that some brands will have a higher capacity than others. I was loading some hot .270 loads with H4831 and noticed that W-W cases had the capacity to hold all the powder but R-P cases could not.

Within the same brand you should be ok.

if your rifle is a 1 MOA rifle I don't think you will notice any difference. Why not run a test? Now in BR shooting you would. Also, why not chrono the loads to see if the mixed cases give a greater ES and SD than cases from the same batch? At long ranges, velocity differences can make a bigger difference than at, say, 200 yards.
Peter.

if he ain't worried about it why should you?
if they were mine i separate by headstamp and weight.
if making a big run i also put them over the collator and check run out and further segregate.
out of 500 rounds i end up with about 75 "good ones" in the .000- .001 range.
after firing them i end up with many more.
this big lot usually ends up as a batch of shooter brass and a batch of good stuff.

If I am not loading max loads which I occassionally dont load to max for hunting I have no problems mixing any brands of brass. I do make sure to test the loads though but as long as they work in all the cases I go for it.

Load them all up and see how they shoot you may not notice a bit of difference in them.

When vet school allows, I am going to weigh the different lots and do some basic statistics I even though the sample size is small. Will post when i get the chance.

We can be a bit too anal you know.
If the guy is relying on you to do his reloading, and doesn't do to suit you, then stop reloading for him or do the best you can with what he provides. If the results don't please him, he can clean up his act to your specs or he can find someone else to do his reloading.
I'm gonna gues that he doesn't shoot enough to even determine if one batch of brass is more/less accurate than another.
Stop angsting over petty shit.

Ha beeman, it's my brother. Yea I am not trying to determine which batch is more accurate, just if accuracy is somewhat consistent across the two lots. I too am anal about loading 20 pieces of the same lot brass at least. I feel very confident that like several of you have said, in a hunting rifle I won't be able to tell the difference. This is a very accurate rifle (factory remington albeit), the best we have got out of it was .575" with varget and 150 BTs. Thanks to all for the input.