Thread: Best brass?

223 and 308

Originally Posted by 223nut

223 and 308

That wont be expensive, or it does not need to be, they are easy enough to load for and both can use 2206H or 2208.

So I braved the rain best group was 23.5 gr next best 23 so will play around them.

Anykne had primers removed whilst firing? Got home and looking at brass, one of my reload is jissing a primer and so is a factory Winchester round... So must be something up with the rifle? Looked at bolt face and everything seems fine

Ok so I googled primers falling out, sign of excess pressure... Could understand it in my reload but factory American eagle by Winchester seems a bitcodd. Had extractor marks on some brass but only on the two hottest groups.

Just looked at groups again, the American eagle was actually a better grouping than my reloads... Wasnt being that percise with first round of load development. Tempted to get a few more boxes, but worried about the primer that fell out of one of them

I use Norma for my 6.5mm SAUM.

I'd been reading how great Remington 7mm SAUM brass was and by chance I picked up a box of factory 7mm Remington SAUM loaded with the 150gr Corelokt from Westgate Hunting & Fishing. Evidently, that ammo had been sitting on the shelf for about 8 years according to the staffer I asked.

Rather than dump the powder, I cut the load by 1 grain and seated a Hornady 140gr SST. Fired it at the range, no issues with sticky case extraction, no other visible signs of excess pressure, primers still nicely rounded. 3 shots Grouped into sub half MOA consistently.

Thought to myself I would use the cases for my loading over the weekend. Loaded up my Lee case primer, put a case into the shell holder and raised the ram... Couldn't feel the primer seat in the case, thought there was something up with the case primer tool...

...but no, those primer pockets had expanded so much that I could take a primer and drop it straight into the case. So i've junked those 20 cases (should have just bought another bag of 300 Norma SAUM).

Mike.

Yeah, think i'll invest in Norma or lapua brass

Ok, so I didn't invest in new brass.... Have organised for brass to get cleaned, deprimed and sized brass but now have to decide which to get cleaned.

Norma and lapua are obviously top of the chain in terms of quality but don't have any what I do have is: Remington, winchester, hornady, hornady supermatch and federal. Will look through it all tomorrow and put up pick of head stamps. Know federal it bottom of the chain but have some p.p.u. Think highland but not sure.

Extractor marks and primer pockets are signs of high pressure, id check my scales and then go back to an adi starting load,and work up from there. As to brass i startrd with a mix of winchester, ppu (highland), remy, norinco and federal. Dumped the federal everything else goes round and round. Have noticed the ppu is the thickest, load is half way up the neck compared to the others.

You are overthinking a lot of this stuff. No need to crimp if it's not a semi auto. Load to mag length but first off make up a dummy round with no powder and primer to confirm that you can chamber a round at mag length (you generally can on most rifles). Keep that dummy round and use it to set your die up in the future.

If you want better accuracy then weight sort your brass and throw out any unusual ones.

Throw them out??? - put them on trademe as "once fired". Why the heck anyone risks this I have no idea

That winchester brass was once fired factory ammo, cant remember what projectile tho.

I bought 100 winchester brass for my 223 instead so it was all the same, it shot ok - not awesome tho, but I had a 1:12 so had to shoot vmax so it may have been the projectile.

If you have the money, Lapua is my pick, I never had any luck with Norma in any calibre.

But, to save money, weight sorting winchester is probably pretty good too.

Chris

dont seem to have many winchester when i went through it after it got cleaned, think its all loaded up lol. got heaps of remington and a decent batch of hornady. going to start with the 70 of PPU since that seems a more managable number! just got to sort with farmer when i can go have a play!

Have had no problems reloading Hornady .223 training rounds a few times, both PPU and ADI cases have had neck splits :-(



My philosophy is cost vs accuracy vs intended use. I'll use some Lapua for target comp but Hornady for rabbits, so I won't cry myself to sleep if I lose some brass on the farm hills. Mind you, I haven't noticed a huge difference between the Lapua and Hornady for 223, but it's probably just as much me and my shooting !