Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Your experience/opinion with PPU Brass

TLDR; While all other properties of the PPU brass appears to be quite good for the price, the neck run-out of the 7.62x54r brass I recently acquired is atrocious.

I recently decided that after owning a Mosin Nagant M44 for many years that I wanted to reload for it. While I do have two boxes of factory ammo with boxer primed brass cases, only a few rounds have been fired out of each box and I would need to acquire brass.

Looking around I was only able to find 3 brands of unfired brass available: Prvi Partizan, Lapua, and Peterson. Both Lapua and Peterson are more expensive and I'm not looking to attempt to turn a sow's ear into a silk purse here. Nothing about this mil-surp has ever screamed precision. I've heard decent things about PPU in the past and got two bags of it from Grafs.com.

Everything about the first appearance of the brass looked good. For grins, I grabbed a handful of brass and my primer pocket uniformer to see how much the pockets would get cleaned up. It didn't even touch them (fairly deep primer pockets) but eyeballing them they look well cut and very uniform. I decided to check for burrs around the flash hole and used a flash hole deburrer. Nothing was trimmed, and the flash holes felt quite smooth in contrast to typical American brass like Remington and Winchester that usually do have a burr. (I know, these are quite unnecessary steps for a military surplus rifle incapable of resolving any difference in brass from cleaned up primer pockets or flash holes. I was just doing it to get a feel for the brass). The length of the brass was very uniform with the cases coming in at 2.101". The trim-to length for 7.62x54R is 2.105" so they were slightly short, but not by much.

With initial good impressions I loaded up the first 10 rounds using a powder coated lead bullet (Missouri Bullet company #1 Russian-Grooveless, 167gr, 0.312"). Since the Lyman M-die in 0.311" wasn't available before Christmas, I got a Lee Universal case expander and used that to expand the necks to 0.312" prior to charging and seating.

After loading the initial cartridges, I ran them across my RCBS CaseMaster and was surprised with with worst run-out I've seen from any of my handloads; 0.006-0.010" TIR with most coming in around 0.008". I believe the best I saw was one round had 0.005" TIR.

My first thought was perhaps the cheaper Lee Pacesetter dies I acquired were to blame (I did purchase and use the 0.311" expander instead of the included 0.308" expander), but my next thought was it could be the brass.

I grabbed 20 pieces of unloaded brass and took a number of measurements:
The case lengths were very uniform with 19 of the 20 coming in between 2.099" and 2.102". and the final 1 coming in at 2.106".
The case shoulders were very uniform with all of them being 3.630-3.631" on the Hornady cartridge headspace comparator using the "D" 0.400 insert.
The case neck thickness was more uniform than I see on typical American brass like Remington or Winchester.
6 cases had <= 0.0005" neck thickness variation
8 cases had ~0.001" neck thickness variation
2 cases had ~0.0015" neck thickness variation
4 cases had ~0.002" neck thickness variation

Frankly, up to this point the brass seemed quite good quality for the price. Until I checked the run-out on the middle of the necks of the unloaded brass.
2 of the 20 (10%) had a neck runout of 0.007"!
8 out of 20 (40%) had a neck runout of 0.006"!
5 out of 20 (25%) had a neck runout of 0.005".
2 out of 20 (10%) had a neck runout of 0.004".
2 out of 20 (10%) had a neck runout of 0.003".
And only 1 out of the 20 tested had a neck run-out of 0.002".
Nothing tested better than 0.002" neck run-out. 85% of the brass has worse run-out than I usually accept in my fully loaded rounds.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised I'm getting 0.008" run-out on loaded rounds when the starting neck run-out is so atrocious. In fact, it seems the Lee dies didn't fair so badly considering what I started with.

For comparison I had a Winchester 6.5x55 case sitting on the bench next to the CaseMaster and tested it's run-out on the middle of the neck. The needle barely moved, not even registering 0.0005" run-out.

I'm not sure I've ever bothered to test the run-out on unloaded brass before, but I never expected to see it so bad.

What has been your experience with PPU brass? Is this typical?

Is there anything that can be done for these cases with such bad neck run-out? Any way to "correct" it, other than trashing the brass or just accepting possibly even worse than normal accuracy from an old mil-surp rifle?

Thanks for taking the time to read this novella.

I never went to great lengths to analyzed and measure them as you have but I prepped and reloaded some 300 WM once fired and they grouped just as good as Winchester or Remington, as a matter of fact I reloaded them 4 times with no problems or loss of accuracy which was between .5 and .75 of an inch. My only experience with PPU brass.

It will be interesting to see how straight they are after you fire and process them once, especially since you found the neck walls to be decent. I've had new brass out of the bag that should have been labeled bananas that were fine after a firing and processing. With the cost and availability of components these days that can be a pain in the ass.

This kind of thing mildly amuses me when someone makes a blanket statement about using only new brass for hunting handloads without more qualifying information.

I use PPU in my 22/250 and it consistently shoots 1/2 moa, no prep, no sorting

Hopefully, after firing and processing the neck run-out is improved.

I did attempt to correct the run-out on the loaded rounds using a Tru-Angle tool, but honestly I don't know how much it will help loaded rounds that have such a high starting run-out.

While using the Tru-Angle I did notice that this PPU brass seems quite hard as it required more force to straighten the rounds than I remember having to use in the past than on other cartridges I reload for. It has me considering annealing before the second firing to see if that helps.

I've been using some Highland 6.5x57 brass, which is PPU brass in Australia. I don't measure bullet run out but going on groups I figure it must be OK as three shots will go under the inch at 100m (110y). I figure the brass can't be too bad to shoot like that.

Anneal of new unfired brass is a good habit. Azar's PPU brass may have missed that at the factory.

I'll add this link for the heck of it: https://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbt...7040/dna-candle-case-anneal#Post12607040

I like it. Both for the performance and the price.

A couple of things I was thinking about after reading your post. You said, "Frankly, up to this point the brass seemed quite good quality for the price. Until I checked the run-out on the middle of the necks of the unloaded brass."

The first is, am I correct in assuming that this was unused brass, straight out of the bag? If so, try running the brass into your resizing die and measuring it again. Try just running the necks over the expander ball. If it is still present, try FL resizing. It is always a good idea to ensure that your case mouth and neck are round and trued up before seating a bullet. It might be that your runout problem will disappear after you true the neck with your die.

The other thing is your expander die. Did you measure the runout after expanding the case mouth? I have one and have never had a problem with it, but I suppose if the expander plug was canted a few thou, it might cause a problem.

This is a shoot from last May. I had some new Remington brass and some new PPU brass. The PPU brass performed quite well. I used a TC Encore, chambered in 30-303 (parent, 303 British), but I had no runout issues. I just checked some unfired brass and it was fine.

https://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbt...-hornady-bthp-match-bullets#Post16117820

Regarding PPU rifle brass, I've only used 7mm Remington Magnum cases several years ago when nothing else was available. Very heavy brass with a slightly reduced powder capacity. Weight difference between PPU and Winchester was around 14%. I'd have to look at my notes to be sure, but I think I had to reduce the normal charge weight by 1 - 1.5 grs. to get the same velocity as when using Winchester brass. I never checked runout as the loads shot accurately.

I have a pile as well in 22-2510 and no issues

I've used PPU in 8x57, 30/06, 357mag, 9mm (probably) and 375H&Hmag, and know of people who've used it in 6.5x55, all with good results.

Only exception was that 2 out of the 40 PPU cases I had in 375H&H mag, had insufficent headspace that make them very tight to close the bolt on. It was definitely a problem with the belt, and the depth of the primer pockets didn't really allow anything to be filed or trimmed off the back of the case, so those 2 got retired.

Just got some PPU 7-08 unfired, unprimed. Average weight 175 gr. By contrast have some RP that averages 162 gr, the Win 157 gr.

Run the brass through a Lee Collet die before using it.

MM

I bought 5 boxes of new ppu 7mm mauser loaded ammo for barrel break in, i fired half of them in my 7x57... pulled the bullets on the other half for break in on my 280 rem barrel... The factory crimp on the case necks is extremely ugly... it's crushed deep & crooked with four equally spaced notches around the circumference... I think it would take a .020-25 cut on the case trimmer to clean it up, and it would be well under the trim to length of 2.225... I don't trust it for load development, so i'm going to start with my new bagged ppu brass... haven't checked that out yet...

I wouldn't worry about the crimp dents. You're not shooting F-class, right?

Suppose the neck of your chamber is .003 larger than the neck of the cartridge that should fairly well line things up when the cartridge is chambered. Check it again after you fire it. You might be chasing a ghost.

Yes, I didn't check the necks of the loaded rounds prior to loading as I've never seen this issue before. This was picking 20 more of the 50 pieces of a new bag of brass as of yet unloaded / unused and taking measurements.


I previously had the same idea and attempted to FL resize a few pieces of the new factory brass. I don't recall it changing the neck run-out meaningfully, if at all. In fact, it felt like the die barely touched the brass. I may try it again with a larger sample of brass and re-validate.


No, I didn't as the run-out was present straight out of the bag. I only noticed the problem after the initial 10 rounds were loaded as the loaded run-out was so poor.


Thanks for the feedback.

No... i'm not competing, But i don't want any "what if's" when developing my first load for a new rifle... components are expensive, if u can find them at all... I will try the crimped brass after i get comfortable with a known load...

A good idea, but I don't have a Lee Collet die that would work for this caliber.

I actually do have 6 pieces of once-fired PPU brass from this same lot / bag. They were fired last Saturday from the initial 10 that were loaded. However, these were very light, low pressure loads (20.0 to 23.0gr of IMR 4198). So they likely weren't fired with sufficient pressure to correct the neck run-out, assuming that will occur. I don't recall what their run-out was after firing (it seems it was still quite poor IIRC), but can check that again tomorrow.