Home Forums Reloading Big Game Rifles How accurate is new Nosler brass?

3 shot groups. When I loaded up a bunch of the load I decided to go with and went back for final sight-in it was still shooting 0.4-0.5"

3 or 5 shot groups? I'm chasing ultimate accuracy with my Forbes but I'm getting 5 shot groups in the .5's and 3 shot groups in the .15's and .2's. I may be at the point where I just need to stop obsessing about how good I can get it.[/quote]

I say you should quit your in danger of recto cranial inversion. The Forbs is a light hunting rifle and a .15-.2 group is about as good as it can get. But I stop way off that at a half inch or on a big boomer once I get to around an inch or less. I doubt a NULA would do any better than your Forbs and almost all of them are very accurate. My Forbs is showing promise but I have not even tried it on a decent rest yet.
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I do sometimes suffer from that problem.

I lucked out trading for this Forbes locally. I learned from Mule Deer here and later confirmed his guess that being one of the first dozen rifles to leave the shop,it was likely built by Melvin himself as he was trying to teach the Forbes staff the proper way to do things. I have no idea why it's first owner would have gotten rid of it since it has shot everything excellently. Good luck with yours. I like the platform so much I'm lusting after a Fieldcraft pretty bad.

Basically you got a NULA as the prototype had the lighter stock. For production runs I think they changed something in the lay up. Still light but it sounds slightly different than the NULA stock.

I do plenty of tail chasing in load work up. Can't stop too fast or the inversion could happen.

How accurate is new Nosler brass?

It don't throw worth a durn <ducking>. you're getting very involved with this handloading thing. :-)

Yep, I'll OCD until I've sucked every bit of the fun out of it.

I find it as good as anything out there, at least in hunting rifles. Nosler's +P .257 Roberts brass has proven to be interchangeable with WW +P in my rifle. Regardless of brand, I always run my new brass through the FL die and back over the expander plug, give the necks a quick deburring twist, and run a flashhole deburring tool into 'em. I'm not sure it is necessary with Nosler brass but I prefer to control consistency myself rather than leave that in someone else's hands.

Tom

You may find new Nosler brass a bit short from base to shoulder, which can allow the cartridge to move forward at firing pin strike and result in a light primer hit. I had problems with factory ammo not firing on several different lots of factory ammo, This has been mentioned elsewhere on this site.

i’ve used a good bit of Nosler brass in 223and 260. Shot great but didn’t last too long - split necks and loose primer pockets after not too many reloads. I went back to Norma and Lapua.

I’ve used it for a while in 7STW. The last box I opened had a half dozen primer pockets that were a unusually tight. Interestingly, that box resulted in a couple blown primers with a load I’ve been using for years and has never showed signs of pressure. I’m not convinced it was the tight pockets as it was with a new can of IMR 7828 which may have been the culprit. Even the brass which blew primers had no ejector marks. I’ve had nothing but uniform results in in 30-06 and 35 Whelen brass.

Interesting. Was the blown primer load above book max?

Yes—worked up in the heat of the summer 10 years ago. One other explanation is the load was originally worked up with Remington brass. Funny thing about that load with blown primers was it still grouped 3 into 5/8”. Rifle is a Sako 85.