Home Forums Reloading Big Game Rifles A note about new vs. 1x fired brass

You can even have tater tots....

How did I get caught up in this?

Thanks Mathman. It's always nice to read about some careful testing.
I've found that simply firing the brass a time or two and using a Lee Collet Die works well. If I need to full lenth size, I like Barness's trick of removing the expander ball and using it later to expand the necks.
I check for run out by rolling the loaded rounds on a glass pane. Yeah, it isn't going to tell me if they are out unless they are out by .004-.005. But, I get some pretty accurate ammo at times. Probably due to the Collet Die more than anything else.
I not a long range shooter or a small varmit hunter unless the ranges are under 100 yds., so what I do works well.
I might ad that from a field position like sitting, even 2-2.5 MOA ammo shoot very close to that which tests close to MOA at least out to 300 yds.
But, who knows, maybe someday I'll get a 40X or a 700 w/ a 5R barrel and need to know this stuff. E

I'm not deluded about how tight I can hold in the field. I just like fiddling with handloads.

No tater tots for you.....

Anyway, is my math correct that if you have 2 sets of 3 and take any random combination of 3 (from the two sets) that there are 20 possibilities with only 2 of those being the 3 in the individual set?


I hate math as much as reloading, for the record. But it's still interesting.

Six items, taken three at a time without replacement, where order is not important, allows for 20 combinations.

Here's a sample of a box of Federal 30-06 165 TSX for schits and giggles...

# R/O COAL
1 0.004 3.623
2 0.005 3.613
3 0.005 3.612
4 0.003 3.623
5 0.004 3.619
6 0.003 3.615
7 0.005 3.613
8 0.004 3.618
9 0.002 3.618
10 0.003 3.619
11 0.004 3.604
12 0.005 3.615
13 0.003 3.621
14 0.006 3.615
15 0.003 3.616
16 0.005 3.610
17 0.004 3.618
18 0.004 3.616
19 0.004 3.615
20 0.002 3.610
S/D 0.001071153 0.004614337
High 0.006 3.623
Low 0.002 3.604

You should have seen some of the bananas I found in boxes of Lake City match ammo.

RO was not as bad as I was expecting for sure. COAL (comparator) was a little rough I thought.

Federal factory ammo has actually been pretty straight IME, but I have run a few lots that were bad. Hdy has been pretty good as well.

The real bad stuff I usually see is cheap ammo and .223/5.56. It's amazing how crooked some of that bargain stuff is.

I've watched people shoot semiautos at 200 and 300 yards with the typical bulk 5.56 and 7.62 fmj and the groups weren't pretty.




I did a favor for a friend of a friend and mounted a scope on a new Rem 700 VTR in 308, and also did a prelim sight in with a couple of varieties of 147 fmj that had been supplied with the rifle and scope. The groups were bad enough that I thought there could be a rifle problem, a scope problem, or both.

I couldn't let it go at that, so I went home and used the brass to make up an old school M1A 168 grain match load with 3031. Voila, .75 moa five shot groups.

I. too, have seen some pretty bad results with surplus 7.62 ammo.
I've got some old "Radway Greem" 7.62 ammo that never shot much under 3 MOA in either my M70 SS FWT., or my old 700 VSFS. In fact, some it wouldn't chamber in the M70.
Have Belgian surplus that would shoot about 1.75 MOA in the 700 VSFS.
But in my M1A, it was the reverse. The Belgian shot worse than the old british stuff. That was for four shots however. The RG ammo put four rounds into less than MOA. But shot No.5 blew the group to four inches. Later testing showed the RG ammo to average almost 4 MOA, and the Belgian ammo a bit under 3 MOA. 50 yd. plinking ammo is about all it is.
Mathman, would like my Federal made Lake City 7.62 brass ? I can't use it. I'll ship it to you if you agree to pay for the shipping charges. Send me a PM with your address if you want it. E

Shot today and it was right on the mark. Groups were 1/2 moa or a little tighter. The brass had been collet neck sized and body sized. The charges of IMR4895 were thrown. The rifle was a 700 5R Milspec fitted with a SS 6x42 milquad scope.

MM - thanks for the test/results. In my OCD way, I thought of the new brass-resizing operation and feel the same way. I've been using once fired brass for a long time. Observationally, my results match yours.

For S&G, I'll have a look at my latest - once fired 308 Hornady brass. I checked a few cases for runout and was surprised how uniform they were and close to concentric. I loaded up 50 sighters/testers using 150/165 Horn and Varget/IMR 4166 and will use these 50 when doing load development when it cools down a bit.

Thanks again.

A while back a friend of mine came into a number of ammo cans full of Lake City 7.62x51 match ammunition, both M118 and M852. His elderly grandfather-in-law who used to shoot a match M1A found out my friend shot 308 and gave him the ammo. Pappy was all right!

Anyway my friend and I hit the range with three or four accurate 308's and shot 300 yard targets. We generally did very well, but now and then there would be a flyer despite no wind, a good trigger squeeze, and so on. This was with us just opening boxes and shooting. So the light bulb lit up. Runout?

I took a bunch home, opened it up, and started putting it on my Sinclair runout check fixture. There it was, major runout for a round here and there. This was particularly true for the M118 cartridges. So I segregated some batches, let my friend shoot them blind to what I was testing, and the runout did make a difference.

Another thing I did was take some cartridges that had pretty good runout and pop the asphalt sealant inside the necks by seating the bullets a little deeper using a Lee dead length seating die. These shot very well, rivaling good handloads.

A little forensic work (disassembly of sample boxes from good shooting lots) also helped me realize gnat's ass control of powder charge weights is wasted effort in a lot of situations.

I came to the conclusion Lake City had the load worked out very well, but production and assembly methods of the time left something to be desired. The fired LC cases when assembled into straight handloads shot very well. A good bit of time and a lot of shooting later those vintage LC cases were getting tired. So when new LC headstamp cases started showing up as components I got nostalgic and decided to make more of my own "LC Match" cartridges. The M852 I can dupe pretty well, but the correct bullet for the M118 would be the old 173 gr. fmj boat tail. I use 175's from Sierra, Nosler, and Berger for those so I have a bullet advantage there.

bobnob17
The reason many of the old timers recommended the use of new brass was that in order for the cartridge head expansion method of gauging pressure of a load to work it was recommended to use new brass. The assumption was that even once fired brass would alter the characteristics of the brass and give unreliable results.