Thread: 243 "cost effective" brass reloading

Hey lads. Been tinkering with the free brass a bit to see what can be worked into a great hunting recipe. I gotta say PPU is so far the most trouble (for me). Upto 5 or 6 thou runout.
The remington stuff is pretty straight and so is the winchester funny enough. Fed was fine as well.

Wondering why PPU is lop sided to the point i could see it.

Gonna be interesting to see how it all shoots. I've neck turned and annealed out of pure boredom to see if concentricity actually has much of an effect on a hunting howa

My worked up load is 42.4gns of H414 using a target 70gn (this is normally a laser of a combo for me and good for all of my brass types)

Anyone else stuffing about with cheap brass?

I never had any issues with my .243 shooting 95 gr Targex, AR2209 in PPU cases and that load was super accurate.

In my Kimber 7mm-08 I tried one load in Remington cases which gave me a shit grouping, same load in PPU cases and I have a 1/2 inch group.

I quite like PPU

When I was reloading factory cases, PPU was my preferred manufacturer. S & B gave me no end of problems.
Maybe you struck a bad batch of PPU ?

Just spend a couple of bucks by some lapua or norma, one less thing to blame lol

Got a couple of hundred clapped out lapuas that are on their 8th cycle. Im using Norma and finding them really good (cant fault them). But i'm loading for mates which exposes me to cals i dont normally use. Its really just an excuse to tinker

Beats watching tv eh

But yeah for guys looking to eliminate 9/10ths of all issues, spend the cash on good brass. Ive noticed you need to be extra carefull with this cheap stuff. You can snap expander rods on non concentric cases (ball removed of course)

buy yourself a Hornady concentricity guage. It allows you to straighten out the bend in the brass & projectile. Assume you've checked your dies to make sure you're not inducing neck bend via decapping pin.

Originally Posted by Seventenths

I never had any issues with my .243 shooting 95 gr Targex, AR2209 in PPU cases and that load was super accurate.

In my Kimber 7mm-08 I tried one load in Remington cases which gave me a shit grouping, same load in PPU cases and I have a 1/2 inch group.

I quite like PPU

PPU surprisingly comes up well when given love and care including annealing and ssm cleaning.No complaints. Just got given some fresh Hornady and realise the rim on them are quite exposed. Compare them to other brands. Not sure why I uniformed them because a huge amount of metal came out of my K&M uniformer which is shallower than a Sinclair.

Originally Posted by chainsaw

buy yourself a Hornady concentricity guage. It allows you to straighten out the bend in the brass & projectile. Assume you've checked your dies to make sure you're not inducing neck bend via decapping pin.

Yep this is the one i use. Quite like it eh but dont use the realignment adjuster. It causes more harm than good to precision. I tried it on my old target brass and it caused massive ES. Better to anneal, FL size, set tension again. Its a pain in the ass but it fixes everything

If it doesnt, pitch that case out. Some brass has thickness variation all the way back to the head.

Worst brass I ever had was hornady. Mixed lots (once fired factory) with one packet of 20 out of 200 super soft.

Sticky bolt on every 10th case.

Stuck to Lapua ever since.

Good components make an ordinary reloader into a good one. Nothing fancy required.

Originally Posted by Tussock

Worst brass I ever had was hornady. Mixed lots (once fired factory) with one packet of 20 out of 200 super soft.

Sticky bolt on every 10th case.

Stuck to Lapua ever since.

Good components make an ordinary reloader into a good one. Nothing fancy required.

It seems to vary from lot to lot. I'm seeing more variation in that hunter range vs the superperformance stuff. That's 7mmRM brass im doing for a mate. If you set the annealer for the heavier neck thickness and just run them all through you will see a different colour on any thin ones you have. I would definitely set these aside.
On the plus side, hornady does ream the flash holes for you which is a plus.

I find PPU brass is a little hard to get decent neck tension but when I do achieve good neck tension they shoot exceptionally well.

243 is realistically a 300 m gun on a red so if it goes hard and is accurate then I wouldn't worry about it.

I have used PPU, Remington, Winchester and Highland.
All reliable and consistent, except Highland which have extremely tight primer pockets.