There have been many threads about brass.....some like this and some like that but rarely does anyone say exactly what about the brass they like or dislike.

It it the state of (assumed) anneal?

Is it the (assumed) chemical/metallurgical composition?

Is it the geometry?

The uniformity ?

What specifically are we liking or disliking when we say this brass is better/worse than that stuff?

I use mostly Laupa (223 and 243) and Winchester (243, 22-250, 22 hornet, 270win). The Lapua is very uniform in both neck thickness and weight. I don't even bother weight sorting anymore. Winchester has been working well for me too. I've tried Remington but that didn't last long. Very un-even neck thickness, very differnet wieghts in the same lot, and very uneven hardness. I noticed it most when I was uniforming primer pockets on once fired and even new brass. Recently bought some Lake City for 223 and have been very happy with it considering the price. Still, I don't mind paying for Laupa for what I get and the number of firings I get out of it. Recently bought some Nosler custom for a 280 AI and it was very consistent as well. Did some wieght sorting and decided it wasn't doing me any good either. I guess I hinge more on weight differences, it tell me alot about wall thickness, neck thickness and case head thickness.

I've owned Winchester, Hornady, and Nosler brass.

They do seem to differ as to composition; softness.

I like the Nosler brass in that it is weight sorted but really the Winchester shoots just as well without weight sorting. I know some here are meticulous about sorting but I have found it to be of no value.

That being said, Winchester brass is all you need! I've shot groups just as good from unsorted brass as weight sorted.

Sorry HC!

WW is what I always try to buy.

I sort for case neck thickness and generally cull 3 to 5 cases out of a pack of 50 that vary in thickness 2thou or more from the norm in 300WM. In recent packs of 308 I culled none!

Recently I had a pack of WW 300WM with virtually all flashholes slightly off centre (slightly!), but am told by those who have tested that it won't matter. I'll load them up soon.

RWS is highly regarded but I haven't yet loaded mine. Norma's were very consistent (neck thickness etc) but loosened up primer pockets sooner than others without top end loads. In my 375 H&H they also seemed to knock a tiny perfect ring of brass off the belt when firing.

I've used RP in 375 H&H only and results were good, but the 375 H&H is quite forgiving IMHO. I do find that when trimming the WW will make a single coil as it cuts whilst the RP makes little chips. The consistency must differ. That led me to think that RP was probably not annealed correctly, but based on what?! I didn't try annealing and trimming again. Come to think of it I will do that.

The RP was less consistent than the Norma (and much cheaper) but I can't find WW in 375 H&H.

I've shot great groups and get consistently low single digit SD's with WW.

I've got good case life too (up to 14 loads in 300 WM annealing every 4th load) and eventually pensioned them off because of perceived age and not poor results.

I use another tact.

I normally purchase (depending on immediate availability) the proprietary case; for .243 Win., .308 Win., 300 Win. Mag. - Winchester, for .222 Rem., 7mm Rem. Mag. - Remington, for European rimmed cartridges - RWS & GECO (same company), etc. I also try the proprietary primer initially. Often this recipe works for me; I stumble across a good, consistant load and go from there. I figure if the company's R&D department did the intial work; why not give their brass & primer first crack?

Yeah, there's situations where this doesn't work; .375H&H comes to mind but the 400 Pretoria Metal Pressing cases have lasted me for ages. Same for Weatherby cartridges; I am curently using Nosler Custom and it's really good stuff and of course there are no proprietary .30/06 Sprg. cases although this cartridge has landed in the Norma & Remington camp for me.

Yes, I certainly note differences in brass composition, some "flaky" (like ARWL states), others appear to cut more evenly in small strips.

I like the idea of KISS and really don't have a brand loyalty except for .223 Remington. Lapua .223 Remington Match is so far & above better (accuracy wise) than any other brass I've ever used in this cartridge - period. I don't have an AR platform so I'm not concerned with getting most (98%) back although there are some hunting situations where it gets ejected and MAYBE recovered. Such is life.

My two major brass gripes are:

I despise S&B brass as I've seen more inconsistancies (wrinkles & cracks) in it that any other manufacturer plus their penchant for undersized primer pocket flash holes (Ugh! - stuck, bent & broken pins!). It has no place on my bench.

Hornady 300 Weatherby Magnum brass (once fired factory ammo) that currently always gave up the ghost with enlarged primer pockets by the 3rd loading.

quote:

I have found it to be of no value.

agree w/rc on this, have never weighed or sorted brass by any other means than the batches it was initally obtained.

Price is what it is about for me. Free is best.

I look at brass as disposable as you are going to loose some of it hunting wear it out ect.

The best way to get brass is having a shooting buddy that buys a lot of factory ammo.

quote:

Free is best.

Now this is a novel concept that really gets my attention ..... and yes, I have a source.

Norma makes the best Brass. It will be as accurate or better than any other brand.
Now as far as hunting goes, if you are getting sub minute of angle with WW or Rem. Brass you have to wonder if it is worth the extra cost?

quote:

Originally posted by larrys01:
Norma makes the best Brass.

What makes it so?.....I wasn't looking for opinions.....I asked for reasons!

It is by far the most uniform. Any batch I have all weigh within 2 grains of each other. The case necks never vary more than .0015 in thickness. The flash holes are drilled. The Case OAL is very uniform. In other words more varibles are eleimanated with Norma than any other brand. Lapua Brass runs a close second.
In my custom .416 WSM Win Brass groups just under 2". The same load with Norma Brass groups under 1 " with the same load. Part of this is when I open up the necks to .416 Cal. the Norma forms much better.

But, Norma tends to be soft in the head and will give you excessivly expanded primer pockets in a couple of firings of loads that WW or RP take in stride for many shots. You have to keep your pressures down with Norma.

I don't find all that much difference in brands of brass. In certain calibers I do run into problems, such as R-P being very thin in the already-thin .22 Hornet. Lapua is extremely uniform in most areas, including anneal. It's nice, but not worth the additional cost, in my opinion.

Had I my druthers, I'd take WW in most instances, but happening to have large quantities of R-P in .223, .243, .244, .270, and .300 H&H, I get by with it just fine and notice no degradation in accuracy compared to any other brand of brass. Once a lot of cases is uniformed for length, (which often uniforms their weight as well), there are very few outliers in most of the commonly available "popularly priced" brands.

I'm also one of the few who thinks nickeled brass in rifles is great. That is probably because I shoot almost exclusivley bolt action rifles and find neck-sizing with the Lee Collet die to produce the best ammunition.

Vapodog.I really like the Speer,Sears and the Browning brass that I have.It was free and for hunting loads either deer or varmints all of the brass works for me.
I tend to be open minded when it comes to brass,sometimes they all put out dogs from time to time.
If I was going to target shoot or match a lot I would definitely look at some of the higher priced pieces,but for now all have done the job quite well.

lake city, twin city, etc.especially nm

quote:

Originally posted by larrys01:
It is by far the most uniform. Any batch I have all weigh within 2 grains of each other. The case necks never vary more than .0015 in thickness. The flash holes are drilled. The Case OAL is very uniform. In other words more varibles are eleimanated with Norma than any other brand. Lapua Brass runs a close second.
In my custom .416 WSM Win Brass groups just under 2". The same load with Norma Brass groups under 1 " with the same load. Part of this is when I open up the necks to .416 Cal. the Norma forms much better.

Now there's good reasons....thanks

quote:

Originally posted by plainsman456:
Vapodog.I really like the Speer,Sears and the Browning brass that I have.It was free

Free is another great reason.....and as a matter of fact price is my primary reason for my choice of brass.....sometimes I want nickel plated.....but far and away price is king and I've never had hard evidence that higher price was better.

I have purchased a bit of Hornady brass and liked the way it was not dented and there was none to throw away.....I usually throw out 1-2% of WW or Rem brass.....and it's not a big deal to me!

I have definite preferences in brass, but for some reason those preferences sometimes vary by the carrtridge being loaded.

For instance: Most of my hunting rifles seem to do their best with W/W, Weatherby or RWS brass....that is "best" in terms of brass life, initial and long term primer fit in the primer pockets, powder capacity, and repeatable accuracy from one loading session to the next.

It is true I do a minor aount of match prep with all three...I trim all the cases .010" short before the first loading, and uniform both primer pockets and flash holes. But I only do it once, and some wee bit of that Winchester and Weatherby brass I have been re-using for up to 50 years! I get the same results from RWS, but have only been using it about 30 years.

I have not found those qualities uniformly present in Remington, Speer, S&B, Norma, Frontier, Herter's, Hirtenberger, and several others.

So far Hornady brass in the more exotic chamberings such as .376 Steyr, .405 Winchester, .450/.400 3", etc., seems to work very well in my hunting rifles but I haven't used it more than about 6 or 7 years yet, so MY jury is still out for a while longer. If the next few batches I get are as good as the ones I already have, it will be a winner in my books.

In my BR rifles, I shoot mainly the .30-BR, and for that I vastly prefer Lapua 6-BR brass, necked up. My second choice for that chambering is necked down and sized down (shoulder moved back and OAL shortened) W/W .300 Savage brass....incidentally, for the .300 Savage-based stuff I don't buy ANY. I use once-fired range pick-ups!!

Anyway, I have tried other brass in my match guns. Several times I have tried R-P in either (both) 6-BR or 7-BR.

My prep is more extensive for my match brass. I set the shoulder where I want it, open the neck the same way, uniform the length, primer pockets, flash holes, and deburr the inside of the flash holes. Then I turn the necks to .0097" thickness, and carefully chamfer them as well. I also use the neck turning to place a doughnut exactly where I want it near the bottom of the necks to form an inside seating depth stop. I do not sort by brass weight, as I have found it a waste of time for use in my rifles.

For this amount of work, I want the cases to last indefinitely.

Unfortunately, I can only get one or at the very most two firings from the Remington brass. After one firing the neck has always thinned so much that the doughnut is no longer useful as a bullet seating depth stop.

I could turn the R-P case necks less, leaving them thicker, but then I would have to re-size the cases after every firing to get adequate neck tension to hold the bullets. With the Lapua, or the W/W brass none of that is needed, ever. Their doughnuts never diminish in size or go away, unless I want them to and ream them out.

Once the .30 BR cses are formed from the Lapua or W/W brass, I never have to size them again, and I have shot some cases more than 300 times in matches, and even more in practice. I believe, rightly or wrongly, that contributes to the consistency of my loads.

BTW, although I don't shoot as much .30 PPC and .220 Firestar (Improved .22 PPC), I find the Lapua best in them also...I reform and match prep Lapua .220 Russian cases for them.

The Lapua brass has superb gradations of temper and hardness throughout, which makes it strong and easy to work with.

Anyway, that's what I use, and my opinions as to why. Scientific? No, just anecdotal. YMMV

I like it all because brass cases seal the chamber really well and is easy to reload. ??

quote:

Originally posted by Jim C. <><:
I like it all because brass cases seal the chamber really well and is easy to reload. ??

....as it should be!

Hey Vapo, I prefer Fully Preped and Weight Sorted Cases that I can separate into any size Lots that I might want. And since I intend to do all the Case Prep and Weight Sorting myself, the Win and R-P Cases work just fine for me.

Both the Win and R-P last a long time with proper Annealing as the shot-count progresses. So, that makes them "Reliable" for me.

They also provide all the Accuracy I'm capable of and they are not nearly as expensive as some Cases.

The Fed Cases seem to have a reputation for "Soft" Case Heads. Some of that may be due to the Pressure Levels Federal loads them too. But I've had some new Fed Cases that were fine and some that seemed just a bit soft, meaning a bit more Primer Pocket Expansion(CHE) than I expected at those Load Levels.

Have used some Hornady 357Mag Cases and they did fine, with no complaints. May still have some.

Mention has been made of several "proprietary" brands of brass. All of the Browning brass (from loaded ammunition) that I have run across was made by Winchester, as has been much of the Hornady ("Frontier"). I don't know if Hornady is now making its own brass, or if it is subbing it out to one or another contractors. I haven't run across any proprietary brass that could be clearly identifed as coming from R-P, but that doesn't mean that there isn't any. Weatherby brass is from Norma.

Some of the old Herter brass was labeled from Finland and could have been either Lapua or Sako, and some was labeled from Sweden and is presumed to be Norma. But G.L. Herter would have just as soon (or maybe rather) have lied as tell the truth, so that brass might have as easily come from Federal, just down the road from his Minnesota HQ, as from overseas.

Not that it means anything special, but I tested some WW Nickel .308 brass yesterday against some LC 7.62. With identical loads the WW brass surprised me by clocking about 28 fps faster than the presumably heavier military brass (of course, that could have been the difference in the humidity when the two batches were loaded). However the most surprising thing was that three shots with the WW Nickel went 2824, 2822, and 2825 fps over my Oehler skyscreens with a Model 35 chronograph, for an extreme spread of 3 fps and an SD of 1. I'm not sure what to attribute that to other than dumb luck. The LC brass turned in a more normal (but still good) ES of about 22 fps with an SD of 9 in three shots.

The last batch of Hornady 6.5 Creedmoor brass I bought looked like it was made by Lapua. It was obviously annealed with discoloration just like Lapua. The first batch and factory rounds don't appear that way and I wonder if Lapua is making it or who may be. My gunsmith reminded me that all brass is annealed and that this was just not polished.

?

price!

things i don't like.. varying capacity, unconcentric, soft (or too hard), plated, steel, berdan, and bent.

We have used brass from so many manufacturers, either as suppliedr brass or as seconde use after firing factory ammo.

These include all the well known makes, as well as some I have never heard of before.

We buy brass in bulk, and we go through a simple routine of praparing them.

1. Full length resize.
2. Trim
3. Uniform primer pockets
4. Clean up the flash hole
5. Weigh them.

We then segregate them into lots by weight.

And here is where the quality shows.

Some brass - like Lapua for instance, especially in 220 Russian - tends to be very consistent. And we can actallu select about 100 cases that weight EXACTLY the same!

Depending on the make, caliber and quantity we have, they are selected and segregated as to the closest in weight, in each 100 lots.

The worst brass I have ever seen?

Some Australian I have forgotten the name of.

quote:

5. Weigh them.

Just curious what your deviations look like? And when you segregate them by weight, what weights separate the groups?

I had some 30-06 Geco brass once that produced sticky extraction with mild pressure.

I went way out of my way to order 5 boxes of Norma .243 brass. It was the sorriest brass I have ever owned. It was about .008 thick on one side and .012 on the other side of the case mouth. You could look down into the new cases and see the variation in the brass grain lines.

Mostly I like brass that I run into that:

1. Is in large lots of matching head stamps for uniformity.
2. Is either free or
3. If I have to pay for it is cheap and
4. Comes from indoor ranges so it has never been in the dirt or weather.

Once fired brass has the added bonus of being proof fired

That being said one of the best lots of brass I ever got was also Norma in 7X57. Nearly 200 once fired cases at an indoor range for $.05 each. Their headspace and chamber size matched my rifle perfectly. All I had to do was neck size.

I have many many Federal, Winchester and Remington cases. In the past 30 years or so there has been little practical difference in these brands. I use them as I find them. Federal is rarely found as new brass and I have never bought it that way.

There are a few cases that are bought for specific reasons such as the nny .303 British.
It currently has the largest head size of any .303 brass. It helps the brass last longer in the Lee-Enfield rifles with huge over size and over length chambers. Most other brands are way too small in head diameter for long case life.
Same goes for 6.5 Jap in the Norma brand.

I have also used PMC 6.5X55 that was so thick in the head it was tough to size.

Ammo sold by Hansen in 8X57 marked with IK (Igman) has loose primer pockets. I would stay way from that headstamp unless very cheap or free.

I do not like Federal brass for my 40 S&W. I just finished loading about 400 rounds using mixed brass (Hornady, Winchester, Win NT, Blazer, and Federal). NONE of the Federal brass would accept the primer. I am not sure why it wouldn't but as you can see by the pic below, it deformed the primer. This happened ONLY with the Federal brass. That pice sticking up is a shaving from the primer. Anyone else experience this?