Home Forums Reloading Varmint Rifles flash holes in brass

Hello all
I made it to the range again today with the brass I drilled to .086. (2.2 mm) I shot 20 rounds with the primer holes drilled and I shot 20 rounds with brass I reloaded in 2019. All of it was 24.4 grains of 3031 and Hornady 55 grain soft points. The newly drilled brass had Winchester WSR primers and the 2019 loads were primed with CCI 400 primers. They were all shot out of a Ruger American compact .223 rifle topped with a Nikon 3-9 Buckmaster scope.

Not to send up any excuses but I had a 15 to 20 mph cross wind across the range and my groups were horrible. They all strung to the left as the wind was coming from my right to the left. I had a flag at the far end of the range but it was hard to eyeball it and send one down range during a lull in the wind. The wind was also shoving the light weight Ruger around at my end as well. I shot off of sand bags from a bench. The rifle stock is a Ruger tupperware that has not been bedded.

Major observations were the group with the drilled holes was slightly better than the group without the drilled holes. The other surprising observation was the group with the drilled holes had a center that was approximately 1 inch higher at 100 yards than the group without the drilled holes. (because of the drilled holes or because of the different primers ??) The group with the Winchester primers was just over 2 1/2 inches verses 3" with the 2019 loads. In both groups I eliminated the worst flyer. I shot 12 rounds at each target at 100 yards and 8 at each 50 yard target. The 50 yard target was to make sure I was dialed in. I shot all targets using 4 round groups and a couple of minutes between groups to let the barrel cool a bit.

I also had 3 pieces of brass that got the primers punctured on the group with the CCI 400 primers. The brass was all LC brass. 2 were produced in 2017 and one is a 2012. ONE had a .073 hole and 2 had a .078 hole. The .073 hole was one of the 2017 pieces of LC brass. (go figure ?)

I'm pretty sure I have 100 of the CCI 400 primers hidden in one of my reloading boxes. I'll see if I can dig them out and try this all again sometime next week. Hopefully the wind will not be so vicious. The Winchester primers looked very much like the primers from yesterday. Somewhat flat but the rounded edges of the primers were visible. None were pierced. The CCI 400's were flat with the brass and 3 were pierced.

So far the only thing I can say for certain was how the brass landed yesterday, especially out of my Mini 14. They were a lot easier to find than in previous days since they tended to land in one spot with the brass that was drilled out to .086 verses the undrilled brass that had various sizes of holes in the brass. I know it's not very scientific but I found it interesting.

kwg