Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Advances in brass ?

Mule Deer is correct.

However, I offer the smallest piece of perspective.

With over 100 years of progress the 30-06 has gone from shooting a 150 grain boolit at 2700 fps to shooting a 180 grain boolit at 2700 fps.

With over 50 years of progress the 308 has gone from shooting the same 150 grain boolit at 2700 fps to shooting a 165 grain boolit at 2700 fps. The Federal and Hornady "light Magnum" loads were successfully pushing the 180 grainer to 2700 fps.

So, propellant progress does occur. But it is S-L-OW.

Bullet construction arguably has progessed much further.

Just my 2 little centavos,

BMT

There have been some improvements in brass. The raw materials might be higher refined--I don't know about that, but it is logical the raw materials could be more pure than those of a 100 years ago.

Manufacturing has seen the largest changes. There were older designs that were not as strong as newer designs. The old Ballon Head is one that comes to mind.

In Hatcher's Notebook, there are several references of rifles being destroyed because of faulty brass. Improperly hardened brass was one of the causes. Another was the drawing process used in manufacture. Sometimes there would be voids or very small cracks on or near the head of the case, causing it to split upon firing.

There have been instances of the bullet soldering itself to the case neck, and when the cartridge was fired, the neck seperated and the neck and bullet both went down the barrel. This had to affect pressures, but I think the causes of this was the bullet jacket material, and not the brass.

In my opinion, quality control and manufacturing methods have seen a great improvment over the past 100 or so years.

Now, you rarely, if ever, hear of a case failure that can be proven to be the fault of the brass. Brass heated red hot in a fire, then polished up and sold as new brass would probably fail, but that would not be caused by faulty brass as it was originally manufactured.

There has been some discussion about which case design is the strongest--belted, rimless, rebated, rimmed, or whatever. I don' know the answer to this one, if there even is an answer.

I can understand how a cartridge manufacturer could and would make the base and case head thicker, strengthening it, when used in one of the newer cartridges that are loaded to maximum SAAMI pressures, and sold to some handloaders who would start with maximum SAAMI pressures and go upwards from there.

Improved case head support, such as that on the 6.5 Jap, the 98 Mauser and the Remington 700 and others with enclosed bolt faces, while not improvements to the brass itself, could logically be make the brass less likely to fail.

It may have been done & I am a dope, but...
Has any manufacturer used a centrifuge to do the initial casting of brass instead of drawing in the usual way?

Would seem to me that we could get rid of all of the lopsided imbalances we have to deal with now.

Pat

I think they have advances in brass, They are selling some here on the campfire. lets see. i saw some once fired 30-06 R-P brass for sale guy wants 36.00 per 100. At that price there must be some special advances on that brass. LOL maybe cuz it is deprimed and cleaned , Heck i can turn out my own advanced brass . LOL