Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Best Rifle Brass for your Money?

I suppose I'm a conservative handloader. I rarely have problems with primer pockets opening up.

I think it’s been inferred many times on this thread

I did in my previous post; recent RP rifle brass I've encountered has complete garbage pockets. 1-2 loadings and primers are falling out, with nowhere near hot loads.

Cripes Gary. They're down in Hollywood MD - go down, beg in person and have a crab dinner at Solomons Island on the way down or back! Would be a fun trip.

Well, maybe I will!

I hope the begging works because at $91.50 for 20 I'll swage my own out of .223 brass!

Don't bite my head off as I am TOTALLY IGNORANT when it comes to tech stuff------BUT do you think you could reproduce/make brass with a 3D printer?

Hip

P.S. Reread the first sentence!!!

I have had wonderful results with hornady

Brass is drawn, starting with flat coin-shaped pieces and making a cup, then in several steps drawing it to full length, with annealing between steps. The result is a case which is work-hardened at the head for strength and hardness, annealed softer at the neck end to enable necking and seating without cracks. The grain structure is also aligned longitudinally to what in metallurgical terms is an optimum "texture" for the application. Printing would not enable that outcome.

You could perhaps design around it, much as cases have been designed which are made from polymers or by fabrication (an old idea which seems to be new again), but it is a pretty mature technology.

Thanx Dan!

I have brass on hand from Remington and WW (some older, some newer), Hornady, Geco, RWS, Norma, PPU, S&B, Bertram, DWM, PMC and probably some others. The older Rem and WW has performed well, some of it has had dozens of loads. It seems to need a fair bit of sorting and fettling though, when you first receive it. PPU has also performed well for me, and is not only good value but also available in some varieties that aren't widely available.

RWS I really like, for how well finished and well sorted it is, but it is very expensive - the Geco line is better value. I have limited experience of Hornady, but such as I have seems like good stuff. I have been a bit disappointed with Norma though, and won't buy it again. I have also been a bit disappointed with some of the Bertram, though I hate to say it, but it is available in sizes nobody else makes, so I guess allowances have to be made.

Lapua and RWS...but to be frank the only brass I will not countenance is Remington.

For the Money?

Up until 5-6 years ago I mainly used RP and some WW I always went through it and did the primer pockets, flash holes and trimmed. Always had very good luck for fairly cheap brass. Then I could either not get any of it or the quality had gone away. So I decided to give Hornady a try and was very surprised at the level of quality for the price.

This right here.

Lapua.

For the money, you say? Hmmm. Let's see, expensive European and domestic "boutique" brass that will provide a much much better chance of uniformity (dimensionally and materially) right out of the box, or much cheaper run-of-the-mill brass that has less chance of uniformity. The run-of-the-mill stuff might end up costing more because of having to buy more.

Perhaps a definition of "for the money" should've been established at the start.

Unless you are a really good shot and have a really accurate rifle, you will never see the difference in accuracy----longevity yes!

The average hunting rifle, buy Lapua brass (if you can get it) and you will be wasting your money!

Hip

Usually, up here in Canada, we get any "left overs" after the American market. Added to that are the restrictions imposed by governments on both sides of the border. Recently I had to buy Lapua cases for my 9.3 x 62 because Hornadys were unavailable. A box of 100 had a sticker price of over $200 + Federal and Provincial taxes = $237 = $2.37 per. My last batch of Hornadys were less than half that price! Will they out-last the Hornady brass by 2x? Only time will tell, but the Honardy cases will allow 2 grs more under my favorite load for the 286 Partition.

I bought a .375 H&H last February, and the ONLY brass available was Remington, so I bought three bags of 50 each at $77 per + taxes. Nothing else available in this area. So far, I've had to throw out at least one out of every ten fired - primer pockets. So I've reduced my hunting load of the 250gr TTSX by three grains of CFE223, that still gives 2850 fps at MOA. I loaded 10 in new brass, shot 4 and had to throw out 1 of those. The other 3 have been resized, and primers seated like they were new - never used cases. I'll have to live with that. It's still cheaper than premium factory ammo (if I could find any) that sells for about $200 per box of 20 with taxes in.

So reloading, shooting and hunting has become a sport for the elite, and pricing itself out of business for those who just want to hunt with good ammo. The discussion of this thread has become redundant for many Canadians.

Bob
www.bigbores.ca

After the rather tedious measuring of a mess load of range brass 270, I found Privi Partisan to be almost as good as Hornady . For a Canuck, buying brass involves having a long list of retailers and finding who has what. I found some almost affordable Lapua 260 recently.

I'm a big game hunter, deer, moose and elk, so I shoot mostly offhand at the range. I've never found a concrete shooting bench in the bush yet. So a flyer from a one inch group is pretty meaningless.As if I can shoot that well offhand. Yeah Right. As a machinist however, those one thou discrepancies in loaded cartridges are bothersome . I'll try to up my game, so the quality of the brass is one aspect of that.

My rifle brass doesn't get used much any more, but I always had good luck out of Winchester .270 brass, and still use it. I get under MOA with it, still, but it's older stuff, and I got it cheap. The worst stuff I've tried to use is Remington, split necks galore (especially .221 Fireball) and Federal's .223, even with moderate loads opened up primer pockets after a couple of loadings. This is my experience, and I don't expect others to have the same. I've also seen primer pockets loosen to unusable status with Federal .30/06 brass within 5 loads.

I got a 5 gallon bucket of Federal .223 brass (picked up from a local pen's guard qualifications), and after loading a few, noted that the primer pockets were getting loose already. I went ahead and loaded the rest, and used them prairie dog shooting. I picked up the empties and dropped them into prairie dog holes, so as not to be tempted to use them again. I still won't buy any more Federal ammo for the brass..............

I don't load to maximum, preferring to keep my loads moderate on the equipment and me, so I don't think the loads were outrageous or particularly hair-raising. That's spread out over a lot of time, too, so I'm sure brass has been changed due to manufacturers wants and needs. Hell, they're in business to sell ammunition, not components, anyway. I don't think they give a rip about handloaders, to be honest about it. They wanna sell NEW ammo, that's where they make their money.

I've tried a bunch over the years, WW, Rem, Federal, Sig, Starline and recently one box of Lapua. I am impressed how consistent the Sig brass is in 243 Win and 6.5 CM, Starline is pretty close to the Sig. The Lapua I got is very consistent, more so than the Sig and Starline...but that might just be the box I got. Best for my money, that would cross accuracy with longevity and I'd put the Sig and Starline at the front then Lapua. That said I do have a 300 WM that loves Federal nickel plated, I just hope it lasts.