Home Forums Reloading Big Game Rifles Mixing brands of brass

When I first started many years ago I mixed the crap out of them, and never had a problem. Due to some advice from advice from someone older and wiser I stopped doing it. But nothing from any of my own taught me this.

As I became more loonified. I separated brass by head stamp.

Now I sort by weight to boot.

I am starting to shoot rather well. Thank you.

Precision shooters take great pains prepping their brass, weighing cases, sorting accordingly, annealing, triming, checking neck thickness, concentricity, etc, etc.

Hunters happy with 1 1/2" groups, doubt it matters.

Reporducing ammo to shoot pigs and deer is different than crafting precision ammo for LR target shooting or hunting.

IMO,

DF

Especially in a sloppy factory rifle

Which is what the average hunter buys at Wally World and hunts deer with.

DF

did a test a while back with one of my highly accurate 6BR rifles with lapua brass. didn't check for run out just case weight, took 10 pieces of brass that weight the exact same and 10 of the worse out of the bunch. loaded up and out to my test range, my test range is a 100 yard indoor range so no wind would effect my test. after shooting 2 five shot groups from each batch you could put all four targets on top of each other and look through one hole, and it was a tiny hole. the rifle was a blueprinted Remington 700 action, pinned Holland lug, Hart 26 fluted sendero taper barrel, McMillan 40x stock and a Leopold 8.5x25 LRT scope. this rifle is on 6mmbr.com with a 5 shot group that measured .082 I don't mix different manufacturer brass, but i dont do alot to it either.

Some guns especially those modified or built for extreme accuracy are very forgiving.
Most guns are not in my opinion.

Had a friend who loaded up some 270 ammo for his gun. It was with mixed headstamps. I shot a large group using the mixed brass at random.
Had one big eliptical group.
Separated the headstamps and shot three different groups using each separate. Had three nice groups, but in three unique
locations in relation to point of aim.
I uniform my brass first. Then separate by weight with the biggest batch being those in the middle range of usually 3 grains. Keep the heavy and light
batches separate.
It makes a difference.
I do have a R77 with a Shaw heavy barrel in 284 Win. It is very forgiving of brass, bullets and powder used. But it still prefers one headstamp at a time.
Tim

PS: Do your own little study and let us know.

For the sake of accuracy in my rifles, I don’t mix brass. That said, as batches of brass for my 223 started to reach the end of useful life, I retired the remaining usable brass to a container and loaded up new brass. After a few years of that, I had a few hundred cases that had been retired, but were still reloadable. It was Nosler, Lapua, Hornady, Winchester, and some Remington. All but the Lapua and Nosler had been extensively prepped prior to use. So, one day I was loading up a bunch of new brass (Lapua and Nosler) and decided, since I was already set up to load, to also load up the mongrel retired brass. All reloads had my favorite warm but not max loads -powder, primer. Naturally, I had to shoot some groups with the new and old brass. The new brass had tighter groups, for sure, but the mongrel brass was not much worse. More flyers with the old brass, which I suppose would be expected. For hunting purposes, the mongrel brass reloads would have been fine, but I just let the grandkids use it up on targets and golf ball shoots.

Never tried all this with anything but the 223, which has a high dollar barrel.

I, like most, was taught not to mix headstamp. Then my brother bought a 7mm Rem Mag and started using HSM factory loads with 180 VLD. I wasn't impressed with the velocity so I bought dies and started reloading for him using his once-fired brass. Imagine my surprise when I found different headstamps with the brass. It was consistent within each box, but some boxes were W-W and some were Norma.

I segregated the brass by headstamp and when I had created the Magic Load I had him shoot mixed brass at the same target. No difference in velocity or accuracy. We only shoot to 600 yards so maybe we'd see a difference at longer ranges.





P

You HAVE to shoot each separate gun to know for sure, but the norm is brass variation will result in group variation.

Try that in a 308 with what is a full load of Varget in WW brass and dupe it in Federal brass. No, don't actually try it.

If they all weigh the same, the internal volume of the cases has to be the same and it won't make a bit of difference. How does the load know what the headstamp says?

Weighing the same does not mean that mixed case volume is the same.

Web design, wall thickness, metal chemistry can and does vary by mfr.

Good chance they will be close in weight---- if the outside dimensions
have been uniformed. ie: sized, trimmed, beveled, primer pocket cut, etc.....

May not be a big issue with some guns and what their shooters are looking for though.
Big difference for some others.

You have to do the process and shoot the gun to know the final effect of different headstamps.