Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Brass prep a waste of time?

After our Easter celebrations today, I decided to prep brass for a hunting rifle project. Being a firm believer in high quality brass and doing the prep work, even for hunting rifles, I purchased 100 pcs. of a well regarded mfg. whose brass I've used extensively for many years. You could see the flash hole shapes were all over the place. The brass shavings here are from deburring those 100 30-06 cases.

Good shootin' -Al

I like to minimize all of the variable that I can control, so I do detailed case prep. It doesn't take that long and while it might not help, it certainly won't hurt.

If I have a rifle that’s showing a lot of promise in the first firing and depending on what I intend to do with the rifle. I’m more likely to spend the time. Trimming to uniform length gives me a good datum if I want to uniform flash holes. Primer pockets …maybe, just depends on how I feel but that only needs to be done once.

Al,

Have prepped a lot of brass, but so far haven't been able to tell any difference in group size with the Starline brass (which was pretty uniform as received) in my .50-70 Springfield trapdoor, a "first year production" conversion done in 1866. Maybe if I mounted a 30x scope?

John

Al,
Does the offending brass have the flasholes punched or drilled?

I have had brass with punched flasholes where apparently when the punch was pulled back through caught some of the breakout and pulled it over the flashole, partially blocking it.

I intentionally loaded a piece of brass in that conditioon and shot it to no ill effects that I could tell. Although the offending chunk of breakout was gone when I inspected the inside of the case!

Most drilled brass seems fine, like Lapua, but brass that's been punched I uniform the flashole and remove any breakout--just in case.......

j how much you prep brass whether it's good or not has a lot to do with how good the gun it goes through is..

Lapua brass is not drilled there flash holes are punched.
Im not sure of any brass that is drilled

I prep all my brass before I load and sort it by weight, have seen better consistency in velocity and groups.

Most of my brass is old enough to vote and some of it is old enough to retire 😜. Maybe the quality was better in the old days. Haven't run into those kind of problems.

My brass prep includes tumbling but only because my brother likes shiny brass.

Sometimes I clean flash holes but usually not.

I separate brass by rifle, neck size until the rifle tells me to FL.

Primer, powder, seat.

Off you go.




P

I didn’t know that. Somewhere I’ve read they were drilled.

John, peen the flash holes closed to get ahead of the temptation to actually fire the beast. -Al

Al,
Are you talking about deburring the flash holes?
On Lapua and Alpha brass any more all I do is neck turn.


dave

When I first read this I wondered what was intended. I know there are guys on here who are perfectionists and mostly shoot for accuracy and tiny groups. Some of it may be for hunting purposes, and a lot more of it is for formal competition or informal. And in many cases (pun unavoidable) it's just for fun and pleasing self. I get all that, but my range shooting is 90% for a good accurate hunting load and practice when I have it - the other 10% is for fun and pleasing self.

I've never found that fussing too much over brass has resulted in finer accuracy, though I aim for moa - or better - for all my hunting loads. The accuracy of a particular load selected for hunting purposes is no worse with cases that have been fired a dozen times than with mint brass. What I've experienced, and I'm sure most have, is that often most new-unfired brass needs some prep, and sometimes a lot before use. My first batch of 9.3 x 62 cases for a new rifle (Tikka) were from Hornady. All 50 of them had to have the mouth of the necks trimmed, inside and out, from a flare that wouldn't allow chambering. It was the result of the brass being cut off at the proper length but never inspected before packaging.

Range accuracy, in my case at least, after I have my hunting load, depends on how I'm "feeling" on a particular day. So, what I've done in many instances over concern for a loads consistency, is shoot a group of three at 100, take the target home, bring the same riflde and the load for several weeks in a row and shoot three more on the same load at the same point on the same target, and so on. That tells me what I need to know about the load, rifle and me as a hopeful hunter. But real life field shooting of game is the final test of the shooter more than the rifle and its load. Sometimes I'll fire one shot per week on the same target and same POI, which accomplishes the same thing. A lot of my shooting in hunting has had to be from offhand, so whether the rifle and load is 2 moa or 1/2 moa is not relevant inside 200 yds.

Yes, I clean and inspect the primer pockets and flash holes before a primer is seated.

Bob
www.bigbores.ca

Iowa winters are just too important to waste. I process brass in the winter and shoot all summer. I have turned into a case prep nazi. It's a border line mental illness.

kwg

I don't get very up on brass prep. I run it through a vibrating cleaner with cob and used to deburr flash holes. Don't deburr any more. Where I probably get stupid is when firing I never allow fired cases to hit the ground. No idea why I started that and probably doesn't do a thing for the brass.

Dave, all that came from the flash holes. Pin gauging them to get a sense of the average size didn't work because the shapes were all over the place. It's not that they had some ragged edges...the holes themselves were distorted and out of shape. The ragged edges have become a bit more prevalent with this brand, lately. Everything else about the cases were as you'd expect for quality....which is to say it was excellent.

I pulled two from a second box I'd ordered at the same time and they had the same flash hole issues. For grins, I'm going to fire them 'as is' a few times and see how the flash holes change, if at all.

Good shootin' -Al

I know that case prep beyond making sure the case mouth is round and doing a little chamfering and deburring is a waste of time for me.

I got into the habit of when I got a new batch of brass I'd FL resize, trim to the trim to length, ream the flash hole and uniform the primer pockets. Does it make a difference? I don't know but I like to think it does.
PJ

I seem to recall the pics Stick posted of early production Peterson brass. Off-center, oval, etc. He gave 'em hell for it and they got their schidt together.

Al - are you going to drop any hints as to the manufacturer?