Home Forums Reloading Big Game Rifles Winchester Brass

Was prepping some new WW brass for a 300 WSM today, and 12 out of 50 cases would not fit my Lee hand primer shell holder. One neck split when sizing...Thoughts?

Keep hearing about WW brass not being as good these days. I have two batches bought a couple years ago and both work fine through my Lee primer (old style) and are producing straight ammo. My Hornady brass sometimes wants to hang up in my Redding shellholders though.......

I had the same issue with some Hornady 6.5 Creedmoor cases. About half wouldn't fit in the shell holder that takes all the other similar head size cartridges. I used my 6.5x55 shell holder which worked a treat. Bit of a bugger though and obviously a quality control issue. I have Jageman and Starline cases that fit fine.

I'm not sure with your .300 WSM cases what other size shell holder you could try. Or maybe take it back and get it replaced. But make sure you get a different Lot Number or you might end up with the same issue.

I had problems with Winchester brass about ten years ago. Several pieces in new bags of brass had too shallow primer pockets, several had pinched case necks, so I just quit buying new Winchester brass. Prior to that, Winchester had always been my reloading choice for brass. I recently was in a position when all that was available in the chambering I needed was Winchester, so I hesitantly bought two bags of fifty. Lo and behold, through two leadings I’ve encountered no problems. Weight is on the good side of consistent, case neck thickness is as consistent as needed for loading concentric handloads. Hopefully this is indicative of a QC change with the company’s reloading components.

About a year and a half or two ago, I posted pictures of Winchester brand 300 WM brass 28 of the fifty in the bag had torn necks, badly wrinkled shoulders, off set extractor grooves, etc. I ask to have them replaced and was told to place them in a box and return them. Winchester issued a call tag. I never received new brass just a check and the explanation that they were out of stock. These were in the Red and Black bag. I have never had problems with the Winchester brass in the blue bags. You can search my posts for the pictures if need be.

I had the Winchester brass that the necks would split after 2 reloadings back in the 90's.
After that I switched to Remington brass with no problems.

I think the quality of available brass stock may be going "off". WW sells low and maybe is a victim of its own success. I'll choose someone else -- Hornady is okay.

Years ago I bought two boxes of Winchester Super X ammo for my .30-06 in the white box with red and orange cross on it.. At the range the first cartridge wouldn't chamber and when I examined it the neck was cracked right down the neck and shoulder, About 10 out of the 40 were similar so I took them back to the shop. They replaced them with two boxes of Winchester 150gn Silver Tips in the new silver boxes. Cool I thought. Back at the range 13 of those 40 cartridges split down the neck on the first firing. The shop didn't want to know about it as they said the cartridges had worked and they couldn't care about reloading them. One shot use. I then bought 100 new Winchester unprimed .30-06 cases from a mate and loaded them up. They shot terrible (2 1/2 inch groups). On inspection the necks were crooked. I could hold them up and visibly see the bullets canted over. Rolling them across a sheet of glass resulted in the bullet tips wobbling quite visibly. Funny enough at the range I'd roll them across the smooth metal lid of my ammo box and they'd come to stop with the bullet angling down. If I loaded them into the chamber the same way groups would run about an inch and a half. After they were fire formed the cases worked fine and groups shrank. So that was three different batches of Winchester .30-06 brass with quality control issues.

These days I only buy Winchester brass in .250 Savage and .257 Roberts and Remington brass in .35 Whelen. Luckily Norma have really come into the Australian market with a big range of unprimed cases and they were just a few dollars more per 100 than Winchester and Remington cases. Also Lapua, Sako, Hornady, Nosler, Starline and Jageman. However, Norma have had a sharp rise in price this year, some cases going up $80/$90 per 100. So lots of choices now. So I intend to buy better quality cases when I can and start to anneal and look after it, rather than junk it after four or five reloads.

I had some new Hornady 270 WSM bras that would not chamber. I tried them in two different rifles. I had to run through the resizing die. I had never had this problem before.

Do you run new brass through before loading?

Generally I’m of the opinion that Winchester brass is pretty good. I use it for a target 308 and a 30-06. I tend to just toss brass that has greater than .002 neck variation. Culled brass is about 10-15%.

Saturday I picked up some brass for my 300 win mag. I loaded up 49 rounds and went to the range to the range. ( one folded neck ). Any way, when I started shooting, one in about every 4 rounds I would gets sticky bolt lift. Consequently, accuracy was pretty dismal.

I couldn’t figure it out. I thought maybe I had mixed primers somehow.

Upon coming home and checking everything, I ran a few bullets down the necks of the fired cases. Some were really sticky going down. Why though?????

More measuring determined that the necks of the brass varied as much as .008 thousands from side to side.

Only 6 pieces of brass out of the 50 had necks with less than .002. Winchester takes the prize for worst brass I’ve ever seen. The most expensive as well. I paid over 10$ per good case.

.002" isn't that tight of a spec either.

Thanks for the replies.
I really hope it was just the lot of brass, but have have my doubts...

Plain and simple, it sucks. I won't buy it anymore...

I remember your thread. I bought some 308 winchester brass at the same time and it was absolute garbage. I ended up trying sig sauer brass and couldn't be happier with that stuff... To the op, put a want to buy ad in the classifieds here. I'm sure someone has some good once fired 300 wsm brass here you could buy..

With Norma brass available (or Nosler sorted Norma) I'd never consider Winchester.

Years back I would buy Winchester brass as I've always preferred it to Remington or Federal especially in hard to find cases like 7x57 Mauser and .358 Win. Just to be safe I did also snag a batch of Remington 7x57 brass as well. But, I did this about two years before the great brass famine and so far it has all been good. The only problem I've had with any Winchester component was those lousy primers that would leak and burn holes in the bolt face. I've only used CCI primers since then.
Paul B.

Winchester replaced my 'old' primers and as far as my experience or as I have heard the new
stuff has no such issues.

I tried red/black bag Winchester brass on a few occasions in the past few years. Sometimes it has been pretty good, but sometimes it has sucked--and since you can't always tell just by eyeballing it, I quit buying it.

I've generally had good luck with Winchester brass, even the newer black & red bag stuff. However, about a year ago, I bought one hundred pieces and about fifteen or twenty were badly wrinkled just below the neck. Sent them in and Winchester reimbursed me for about the same as or more than a bag of fifty costs.

Just bought a bag of Remington 300wm brass from a friend. 48 out 50 had necks with no more than .002 variance. I thought that was pretty good.