Home Forums Reloading Big Game Rifles Peterson & Starline Brass

One of the silver linings in the extreme component shortage is being forced to try new things.

Two new components I tried and seem good are Peterson brass and Starline brass.

Peterson's initial quality out of the box is comparable to Lapua brass for consistency.

Next, Starline has long been known for quality pistol brass. They now are making rifle brass.

Starline is lower cost than Lapua or Peterson.

The initial impression is good quality, behind Lapua or Peterson, but better than Hornady and vastly better than Winchester.

Neither have been through multiple loadings, so cannot evaluate long term durability of either.

Bottom line, Peterson and Starline provide some good additional offerings of brass in a time of limited availabilty.

Have you measured the neck walls of the brass? I've not had very good luck for uniformity in that area with Starline in 243 and 308 Winchester. SIG brass has been markedly better.

OP- what's your criteria for quality?

This thread was a hoot.

Yep, remember that thread, it was interesting on many levels. Whatever was going on in 2018, this batch from 2021 looks better. So maybe he did them a favor and now three years later they are paying more attention to what is going out the door?

As far as my criteria for “good,” almost any brass can be turned into good quality and produce good quality results. The difference in quality is how many have to be culled and how much work and time are required to produce a fairly uniform batch of well prepped brass on what remains before good results appear on paper and critters?

Lapua brass takes a minimal amount of work due to good consistency and never had to cull even one before the first firing.

For comparison at the other end of the scale, I have worked with Winchester bag brass when it was the only option for 7 WSM and produced excellent results at 1,000, after lots of hours of work and culling about 1/3 after a few firings. That was older Winchester brass, which is better than their recent efforts.

Anyway, I needed some .300 Win Mag brass this year after giving a friend what I had left, which he needed for a hunt. Peterson was the only available brass I could find, so gave it a try. It arrived and looked nothing like Stick’s photo. So worked a box, it took minimal work, just ran it through a sizer as I do all new brass including Lapua, trimmed and chamfered on the Giraud, and hit the primer pocket with a Sinclair primer pocket uniformer which I do on all new brass including Lapua. I debur flash holes when needed, which is not needed on Lapua and was not needed on this batch. See photos below. None needed to be tossed after visual inspection. So it was prepped exactly as I do Lapua and felt just like prepping Lapua brass. Results on paper were good, 1” five shot groups at 200 yards with 165 TTSX, which was the same as my last batch of heavily prepped Winchester brass. That is good enough for my hunting needs as far as I’ll hunt that rifle and load.

fwiw - here are a couple quick phone photos from a new box I just opened right now to take some photos for you. The primer holes are clean, deburred, and uniform. So, what they are turning out in 2021 is what I am using and commenting on.

It is a sample size of one, but certainly more than good enough to cause me to keep using them, until they give me a reason not to. I have zero connection to them, just sharing info on what appears to be a viable option if a person needs brass and cannot find what they need or want. Lapua is supposed to sell a batch of .300 Win Mag brass this year, which they have not offered in many years, doubtless it will be good.

Mathman, no did not measure necks on either brand and cannot dig out the right tool to measure accurately right now to check. I quit chasing that neck turning rabbit years ago. Never found the dividend worth the time for my purposes, though I do not shoot benchrest either.

I don't trust any brass until I've checked it out. I've even had a marginal batch of Lapua.

I don't want to neck turn either, but I want neck walls uniform around the circumference with preferably .001" or less variation. Starline didn't come close to that, and brass that requires a heavy turning doesn't shoot as well as brass that is uniform to begin with.

The SIG brass I have has been great right out of the bag.

Mathman,

I found measuring, weighing, and sorting were most effective after at least one firing and even better after two. Before the first firing, it has been a waste of time in my testing or at least the results did not merit the time sink. If I am going for absolute best results of the bullet going where intended, new unfired brass of any brand is never my first choice.

fwiw - read that ADG made brass for Sig, or at least was making it in the past. ADG nevers seems to have what I need in stock or I’d gladly grab a bunch.

I’ll not be doing any shooting for the next couple of months, and likely just shoot small rounds for awhile after that, but will try to remember to take some photos of targets shot with Starline without the necks turned for you next time I shoot it, though it may be quite awhile. Again, I’m not shooting BR, so true sub-moa going to the intended point of aim is good enough and half-MOA well more than good enough for me as long as the cold bore shot goes to the intended point of aim.

Hitting a 1 MOA target with a cold bore shot is my standard for acceptable gun, scope, ammo, and hunter/shooter. Time spent practicing judging wind and tightening the driver nut seems to yield better results for me more than neck turning.

That is just me, just a deer and pig hunter. YMMV of course.

I push the necks over a mandrel to round them out and make uniform the neck tension before the first loading. After that step the ball mic works on them just fine.

The Starline tripped me up in a way because I didn't measure the necks soon enough. I expanded them with the mandrel and loaded them. The runout of the assembled cartridges was ho hum at best. In my experience I usually get a good improvement with the second loading. For the second loading I used my standard procedure which usually produces very straight cartridges. I assembled some rounds and the runout was still ho hum. That put me into investigative mode and I found the crappy neck walls.

mathman,

I just measured neck wall thickness on a few pieces of new straight out of the box Peterson brass for you. Four measurements were taken on each piece. Most showed variance of less than 0.001”. Most measured around 0.0175”. Maximum variance measured from 0.0170” - 0.0185” on one case.

Hope that helps or is of interest.

Jeff

I’ll be loading up some Starline Grendel brass soon. I’ll have to try mathman’s method on checking the necks. It is lighter than the Hornady, unlike their 6mm CM.

I’d just about rather watch The View than turn necks.