We have seen advances in gun metallurgy (scandium, titanium), advances in scopes (lens coatings, 4x over 3X width of variable power range), and advances in bullets (premium controlled-expansion bullets, handgun bullets that expand at lower threshold velocities) over the past several years. Advances that normal shooters can take advantage of and appreciate.

Why hasn't brass advanced ?

Yes, we have new cartridges like the short mags, but that is mostly changes in shape, not the brass itself. Premium brass cases like Norma or Lapua help mostly the target shooter who is too lazy to start with Winchester and Federal and slave over each piece for hours to make them uniform.


Why hasn't brass improved as an item for capturing pressure so we can shoot 75,000 PSI routinely instead of 65,000 PSI ? Or so we can reload brass ten times more than we used to before cracks, head separations, and the like ?

We need advances in brass.


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Not going to happen because it is BRASS.

Back in the 60's the ammo companies were looking at steel alloys as a replacement.

A couple of points came up that made them decide to give it up.

1. Corrosion issues. Since the military is the single largest consumer this is VERY important issue.

2. Costs. Even though steel as the base metal is cheaper the corrosion resistant metals like stainless is not.

3. Costs in production. Steel alloys are harder to work with and form compared to brass alloys. This means new machines that use more pressure (cost more to own and operate) and new or more processes to produce a cartridge case.

4. The market. Lets face it. The small arms market is very resistance to new things. For example the bolt action that is held in highest esteem is the M98 patterns.

5. Barrel wear. As pressure goes up so does the flame temperature of the burning gases. This increase the throat and barrel erosion very quickly.

These are the ones I remember. There may have been other factors.

For the those that reload. Sizing the brass would be much harder. I am not sure if the current dies would be able to do it without undue wear. They are designed for the brass case. Most complain about how hard nickel coated case are to size. Just imagine stainless steel ones.

"Premium brass cases like Norma or Lapua help mostly the target shooter who is too lazy to start with Winchester and Federal and slave over each piece for hours to make them uniform."

Pretty foolish to think the lazy man chooses good brass.....

There was a company that made stainless steel case heads and thread-on throw away tops to make a cartridge last longer and support more pressure. Theory was, you could get higher pressures using this gizmo. I don't think it made a hill of beans difference, and the reason it isn't on the market currently. That darned evolution deal....

Brass is contained by the chamber, and as long as you don't exceed the elastic limits of brass you can keep reloading them until the cows come home. Brass is inexpensive, won't damage or wear away a chamber, forms easily, etc.

Exceeding the current pressures and velocity has minimal gains, just ask the No-magnum in my vault crowd. Case capacity or powders need to advance to get more pressure with current case capacities for most every cartridge we currently have in a shoulder rifle. Bullet and barrel technology needs to be improved to exceed current conditions. Ask the 220 swift guys how many rounds their barrels last due to throat erosion, how often the high velocity rounds need copper fouling removed from their barrels, the extra powder residue generated by big case capacity.....All add to diminished returns.

Allen

Brass is already an ideal metal for cases. It seals the chamber so gas can not blow back and then immediately shrinks enough so the case will not stick in the chamber and fail to extract.

If you want to get higher pressures (e.g. 75,000+ psi), you are seeking higher velocity.. The same result can be achieved by using a larger cartridge (e.g., go from 30-06 to 300 Winchester Magnum, or from a 458 Wichester Magnum to a 458 Lott Magnum).

Automobiles can improve.
Airplanes can improve.
Home temperature systems can improve.
Music systems can improve.
Television sets can improve.
Computers can improve.
Dentistry can improve.
Surgical procedures can improve.
Pharmaceutical remedies can improve.
Corn yields can improve.
Coffee can improve.
Cooking recipes can improve.
Rifle barrels can improve.
Stock materials can improve.
Scopes can improve.
Reloading presses can improve.
Bullets can improve.
Powders can improve.


Brass cannot improve.

Got it.

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Pretty much... Although I'm far from a college professor, 5 years as a machinist taught me that. I doubt you'd find a better overall metal to make cartridges out of than brass.

About the only thing thats changed on brass is "Gradient Hardness" techniques. Basically annealing on steroids, in the reverse direction (making the case head end of them harder) To my knowledge, the only rifle case this has been applied too is the 338 Lapua. But again, I'm no college professor

I think brass is the ideal material for cases. I believe it is the necessary "weak link" that we need to keep foolish handloaders, that consistently push the limits in pursuit of that last foot second of velocity, form blowing their collective heads off. Thank goodness these folks are few in number.

I read somewhere, or maybe I dreamed it, that Lapua's recipe for brass includes a very small percentage (like maybe .5%) of silver. Part of the reason their brass is so highly regarded and priced. Anyone know if that is true? I have not seen this on their website, but then why would they tell their competition?

1flier

From talking to various engineers there are also problems with rifle actions once the pressure consistently goes much over 65,000 psi. Even the best modern steels simply won't take the pounding for thousands of rounds--at least in a rifle action that anybody wants to carry. So even if we invent cases that will take higher pressures, the actions won't on a long-term basis.

I have known some guys that didn't believe this. Some of them blew up rifles. I haven't heard from some of the others for a while, so don't know about them.

If you could increase pressure by 10,000 psi, how much velocity could you gain? If you gained 10%, which I doubt, how much flatter would the bullet fly and how much harder would it hit? If, for example, my .280 pitched a 140 gr bullet 3300 fps instead of 3000 fps -- I would gain, what -- three inches less drop at 400 yards? And 400 ft-lbs more retained energy?

The risk/reward analysis seems pretty straightforward to me...

Dennis

Well, if we cannot get higher pressures...

How about longer case life ?

Have our 220 Swift cases last 100 reloads at SAAMI pressures.


It's just difficult to believe that brass cartridge cases are the only thing in the known universe that cannot be improved.

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There is also the notion that because its newer it must/has to be better.....

Don`t know about you but I`d have to toss in sex when you`re 18 with brass as just about perfect <grin>

Brass quality could possibly be improved adding life or accuracy to our loads, but the base material is so close if it was possible cost would probably make it impractical.
JMO...

Yeah, I know brass is brass and brass works. But it would be nice if we could make better use out of all that pressure. Maybe mix in some Teflon/kevlar/composite sort of concoction that would let the case relax some predetermined precise amount so we'd have a perfectly dimensioned, never need to be resized case each time we extracted the fired case. Maybe use all that pressure to perfectly uniform case necks. Just think, no more case lube. Or not. Use anything beside Copper and Zinc and I guess we couldn't call it brass anymore.

Best advance you could make in brass is to eliminate it altogether.

Caseless rounds have been tried and they work but still have a lot of problems. mostly I think with the fragility of the exposed propellant charge.

I've always thought some separate propellant/bullet design might have merit, like metering a precise amount of liquid or gaseous propellant into a firing chamber behind the bullet. That's basically what a CO2 gun and even a potato gun does. If you could replace the inert CO2 with a highly volatile and energy rich gas/liquid you could touch it off with a spark. Obviously lots of engineering problems to solve when you're talking 60,000 psi but the concept seems sound.

That would take us back to the days of separate powder, ball and cap - you'd have separate projectiles, propellant and a power source, but I'm sure a design could be worked up to reliably handle those.

Rail guns eliminate the brass and can produce some fantastic velocities. But a power supply sufficient to drive a 150 grain .30 caliber bullet at 8,000-12,000 fps is going to be pretty big. Of course, with everybody and his brother on ATV's these days, a separate trailer to tow your rail gun's generator isn't out of line.

Anyway, those are some ideas. But I suspect brass and cartridges based on brass cases will be with us for a while longer. One round of ammo contains everything you need to fire it. It's easily waterproofed, relatively robust for rough treatment and lends itself to reliable feeding in lightweight mechanical devices with a minimum of working parts.

Sometimes the simple stuff is hard to improve upon.

That story went around about Norma brass about 40 years ago but it was never confirmed.

You have but to read some of the analyses of brass on the internet to understand why brass is the ideal material for cases. Cartridge brass is 70% copper and 30% zince. There is a minor tolerance to the proportion of something like �1%. Beyond that the elastic characteristics which are essential, start to change. Not many other materials, plastics or alloys have the unique properties of cartridge brass.

I have no in depth knowledge of this but I believe what alters the characteristics of brass between manufacturers is the annealing they do during the forming stages. It's annealed several times, mostly after the major forming processes and it seems likely that different manufacturers do it slightly differently thereby imparting properties to theirs that aren't neccesarily shared by others. That alone is likely the difference in the European brass that most times is superior to our domestic brass; I'm thinking of RWS, Lapua and Norma.

Dennis,

The ballistic rule of thumb (which of course like all "rules of thumb" is only approximate) is that any % increase in pressure results in an increase of half that percentage in velocity.

So if we increase pressure from 65,000 to 75,000, we increase a 3000 fps load to 3230, or thereabouts.

But now under Obama we have hope and change.


Maybe we could get 3,350 fps with the bailout.


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If we use the same powders, yes. But if new powders maintain peak pressures longer, velocity can be higher at the same, or lower pressures. Its the same reason a 55lb draw compound bow is faster than a 55 lb draw long bow.

One of the guys I used to shoot BR with told me that by annealing every other loading, he got at least 50 loads out of a piece of brass. That's pretty good return on your investment there. Take care of your brass and it will last. Abuse it and it's gone in 2-3 loads.

bja105,

There have been advances made in powders, but they have been relatively minor. Every few years a new Wonder Powder comes out that supposedly gets 100-200 fps more in loads in the 3000 fps range, at least according to all the handloaders that "estimate" pressures. This happened with Norma 205 in the 1970's. I heard it about VV N560, for instance. Then pressure-tested data becomes generally available, and the ballon gets popped.

Certainly some powders can produce a little more velocity than was possible 60 years ago. But so far the gain hasn't been all that much--at least for handloaders. And even some of the super-velocity factory ammo of the past decade hasn't quite panned out like it was supposed to.

And when such technology does work without a hitch, often the technology isn't available to handloaders--the shooters most likely to use it.

I am ever hopeful, but right now the best handloading solution for extra velocity is extra powder space, not harder cases or magic powders.

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