1.) Who makes the best brass and why do you feel it is best?

2.) How the heck do you check the hardness of brass with somekind of hardness tester?

Nik

I'm certainly not the most authoritative voice on this board, but I have been really impressed with the uniformity of Lapua brass.
I only wish I could find it in 375.

You can load this stuff right out of the box without any hesitation. I've found that domestic brass (ie WW & Rem) require a fair amount of post manufacture correction prior to the first loading.

I understand Norma is very good, but I have not used it.

Tim

Now for hunting ammo, from a factory gun, you could probably use any of the major manufacturers and never know the difference.

To test the hardness requires special equipment. You can make your own tool but it will only give you relative hardnes results unless you put together a selection of samples of known hardness - contact me off board through email and I can provide you with drawings and specs.

PaulS

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stay safe and live long!

Winchester brass is getting a LOT of rave reviews in here -- and elsewhere. I've been seeing this again and again. Winchester seems to be the preferred "commercial" brass.

I'm willing to put a lot of labor into brass. I buy a heap of ONE MFG LOT NUMBER, and then deburr the flash hole, uniform the primer pocket, neck trim to length, turn the neck for concentricity.

I'm neck sizing fire formed for .223 Ackley. There's a thread in here about the possibility that neck sizing gets the necks off center from the rest of the case.

Hmmmmmmm . . . are we ever going to get this brass thing figured out?

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.223 Ackley Improved Wildcat Forum:
http://www.hotboards.com/plus/plus.mirage?who=223ackleyimproved

Don't believe the $1/case story...not for Lapua.

Sinclair International sells Lapua as follows:

243 - $42/100
308 - $33.75/100
30-06 - $50.40/100

After you spend time weighing the domestics and culling the light/heavies and throwing away the ones with crushed necks or dented shoulders, the cost is not all that different. Especially if your time is worth anything...and of course, it is.

My only complaint with Lapua is the limited caliber availability.

I buy mostly Leupold scopes because I think they are better than most. Why should I scrimp on brass? After 10 loadings, the incremental cost per case is close to zero (actually, about 1.9 cents per shot).

Tim

For my money nothting else than NORMA, LAPUA and RWS. Hirtenberger also makes nice brass I tried Remington once and never again. Never has the chance to try winchester brass.

/ JOHAN

My god..... what has happened - We normally get stung big time for anything we buy in the UK but the �24.50 I spend on 100 LAPUA .243 cases is cheap

quote:

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Originally posted by Flip:
I use our local PMP bras and it works like a charm

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It never ceases to amaze me how many countries are represented in this forum - shooting and reloading are truely universal activities! Here is to all you shooters all over the World!

Anyway, I have to respectfully disagree with the opinion on PMP brass (just in case anybody else might think of buying any, they should have a second opinion).

I tried PMP .223 brass as an economical entry point into a reloading project for a friend. Well, saving on the brass with PMP turned out more expensive than I had imagined: we ended up chucking that brass and buying Lapua (after all). Since this is the only PMP brass I have tried, I can't say whether the problems I encountered are general, apply to all .223 brass or only to the batch I got? Problems ranged from: semi-crimped primer pockets (although this is sold as commercial brass), extremely low internal capacity, widely varying neck tension (new brass, mind you!) etc etc. As I mentioned, in the end a bunch of Lapua cases (at a price) solved the problems!

FWIW - mike

That's depend on the caliber

Lapua, Norma, RWS,... are great and I use brass from these brands.

But I'm also happy with RP for my .444 Marlin , my 30/30 and for my .458 Win Mag too.

IMHO the best quality/price come from Starline in the US. They produced all the time new calibers.

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BER007
Keep the faith in any circumstances
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BBER007@HOTMAIL.COM

Welcome to the forum.

Lapua and Norma are usually of more uniform quality.

RWS is very close behind them, then Federal, Winchester, and trailing behind is Remington.

I am basing this on our experience of using thousands of cases.

Having said that, regardless of make, we have found some shortcomings in brass from all the above makers.

Also, regardless of make, we always do our own prep and sorting of brass.

1. Size all cases.
2. Trim to uniform length.
3. Uniform primer pockets.
4. De-burr the flash holes.
5. Sort them by weight.

We try to keep the weight variations as small as possible. For bench rest shooting all our cases have no more than 0.2 grain variations.

For hunting calibers we try to keep the variations as low as 1 grain or less.

I can see that this might be a problem for someone buying a few cases, but in our case, we buy our brass in bulk - in the 1000s - so getting enough in any weight segment is not a problem.

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www.accuratereloading.com

Anyway, one comment about RWS brass: never have I worked with brass as solid as RWS! I usually think of them as the "Panzer" of cartridge cases! Example: to deburr non-RWS brass after trimming, one normally has to be a bit careful about not removing too much metal - brass being pretty soft material after all. Not so with RWS! With RWS the right way to work is is to use (almost) as much force as you can muster to get the darn burrs away! Or try trimming RWS 8x68S cases - if you happen to use a trimmer with a (sub-)caliber insert in the caseneck (forget the technical term), you almost can't remove the wretched brass from the trimmer, that is how hard and large the burr resulting from trimming is!
Occasionally, I have also run into RWS cases where the cartrige "rim" (even on un-rimmed cases) is so thick that it won't fit my shell holders. It works, but sometimes only barely so.
RWS cases do last a long time - they had better do the way they are built! Truely the "Panzer" of brass!

- mike