AU338MAG,

Twenty years ago typical Remington and Winchester brass was pretty good. I used to sort it for even neck thickness, no more than .001" from one side of the neck to the other, and end up only rejecting 10-15% of the cases. But that changed over the next decade or so, to the point where sometimes I only found 15% of the cases met my standards--so I started using better brass, such as Lapua.

But in recent years quite a few other good brands have appeared--and around 4-5 years ago I also discovered Hornady brass had become much better dimensionally. In fact, I bought some of their .275 Rigby brass, partly to test one of the new Rigby rifles for an article. Didn't buy that rifle (even with the writer's discount it would have been more than I wanted to pay!), but a year or so later did trade into one of Ruger's "African" Hawkeyes in .275, which shot very well using the Hornady brass, as around .7 inch with 140 Partitions. Have also had recent luck with Hornady 7mm Remington Magnum brass, which turned out to basically match quality--and while it cost more than Remington or Winchester, it wasn't nearly as much as Lapua or Nosler.

There are some other good brands that aren't an arm and a leg, which I mentioned in an article for HANDLOADER a couple years ago, and republished in somewhat different form as a chapter in GUN GACK III.


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