Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Different brands of brass.

I know, but I’d prefer to throw those in a bag for such attention later en masse rather than futz around with them in dribs and drabs. I tend to do my loading in stages, the final one being charging and seating (except of course, firing them😜). The brass is cheap and my time ain’t.

Thanks for the info!

Thanks for the information! I'll have to see if I can find this book.

Nice group there! I was able to find starline brass a bit less then Rusty wood, and the fun thing, the store also has a couple of howa rifles in both 6.5 grendel and 7.62x39

MCMark;
Top of the morning to you sir, I hope the weather out in eastern Saskatchewan isn't too frigid this morning and you're all well.

Since I see now you're able to receive PM's that flashing red mailbox in the upper right of your page is from me - well maybe you've got more than that, but one is from the snowbound Okanagan.

Steve's recommendation for Rusty Wood was a good one in our experience. We've dealt with them on a few things and they were always top notch.

In the PM I've sent a link to John and Eileen's website where the books can be had. Being me I've included a reading list and all that...

All the best to you all this Christmas Season.

Dwayne

Did I state that Remington brass was among the several brands of brass that have improved considerably?

No, I didn't--not here, and not in the chapter in The Big Book of Gun Gack III.

This year I did obtain some recent Remington .308 Winchester factory ammo, but have not had time to fire any and check out the quality of the brass.

Sorry, you didn’t say. So I have no idea what brass you were referring to.

Have a bunch of new old stock JBA Brass. Any thoughts on JBA ?!?!!

I feel this will be an unpopular opinion, but I use a bunch of Federal brass in multiple calibers. I don’t hotrod them, never annealed, most reloaded less than 3 times. I have never had an issue.

I agree with you, for example about 25 years ago I bought a lifetime supply of Federal Gold Medal brass in 300WM.
It has been of very good quality, no primer pocket issues and very uniform.
Lapua waited way too long to make brass for this caliber.
I think where Federal got the bad rap started was from 223 brass, I have seen a few lots that were junk

Ya might wanna think about buyin' the book.

That rifle has been one of the easiest I’ve ever owned. Not as “nice” as the CZ it replaced, but no matter what I’ve done to it, new bottom metal, new stock, multiple scopes, it just keeps plunking them into nice clusters. Its “understudy”, a Carbon Stalker .223, gave me a little trouble because the barrel was tapping the forend, but sandpaper and elbow grease took care of that.

Have some other bullets to try out when time and enthusiasm come together, ABLRs and RDFs, but those Gold Dots are tough to beat, so I buy ‘em when I see ‘em.

I've been buying better quality brass the past decade like Lapua, Sako, Norma, RWS, Nosler etc which has been great. Then some brands that I didn't know made rifle cases like Starline and Jageman.

The worst brands over the years have been Winchester and Remington with cases splitting on the first firing and one batch of 30-06 cases with necks not straight which could be seen with the naked eye. They were fine after the first firing but I had 200 of them to pop off first. Funny though I've been loading Winchester .257 Roberts cases for 25 years. One batch were Hornady Frontier but had (Winchester) in brackets on the invoice. They have been excellent with not one case failure in all that time. I have two Ruger Hawkeyes in .257 Roberts, one matte and one gloss, with the same Loopy 2.5-8x36 scopes and both bedded, barrels floated and triggers worked on by a gunsmith. The rifle with Winchester cases shoots just as well as the other running Nosler cases, which is 3/4 inch at 100m (100gn Hornady, 100gn Ballistic Tip, 100gn Solid Base).

The only issue with the better quality brass is when emptying the magazine on a mob of pigs busting out across a paddock and watching $3 and $4 cases go spinning off into thigh high grass. My Ruger tang safety 7x64 ejects cases 3-4 metres away when the bolt is worked hard. Which is one reason I tend to polish cases and keep them bright and shiny as they are easier to locate on the ground.

Remember the days when you could buy new primed cases?

If I recall correctly, Federal Gold Medal was the first 'premium' brass, or one of them. I have some in .308 which must be over 20 years old.

The proprietor of my local gunshop once quoted the Raytrade rep (Remington importer) saying that Remington doesn't give a crap about the reloadability of their brass. They make it to be fired once and ejected.

Which is kinda strange as they sell bags of unprimed cases for the reloading market. ????

Remington went through some major economic troubles in recent years, which is no doubt the reason the quality of some of their products declined. The company declared bankruptcy a a couple years ago, and the various divisions were purchased by various other companies--which resulted in the firearms and ammo companies becoming completely different entities.

Which is why I purchased the .308 Winchester ammunition mentioned in an earlier post. It was the first I'd found made by the "new" Remington ammunition company, which is why I'm interested in how well its made. But as noted in that post, have been too busy with other projects....

I first became aware of how much brass quality affects accuracy over 30 years ago. Back then I could buy bulk brass made by either Remington or Winchester and sort it for neck-thickness that averaged .001" or less variation--and only reject 10-15% of the cases. Around a decade later that ratio was often reversed--with only 10-15% of the necks varying .001" or less.

Which is why I started buying better brass, at the time mostly Lapua. But now a number of companies make very uniform brass.

I'm not sure I'd ever considered Federal brass to be "premium", but it is certainly an adequate brass. I've loaded a metric ton of it in .308 Winchester over the years. I can usually get ten or so firings out of it. Prep certainly has a lot to do with any brass. I bought a lot of 1,000 .260 Remington about ten years ago. It has been some of the best brass I've ever had.

I loaded with Federal, Remington, Winchester, and Hornady brass today. The primer pockets were too tight on the Hornady, the Winchester brass too soft and seemed like it wasn't securely gripping the bullet, the Remington brass was alright but the Federal was the best.

I dont know what is best anymore. Seems like after 4 loads the neck cracks, so I will start annealing . However, I went to the gun club and got a bag of Hornady .243Win brass . Only had 94 pieces, and half had brass colored primers and half has silver ones so I know it was mixed. But hey,, $5.00 for a bag was hard to go wrong so I bought a bag . Seems all of them were virgin brass and never reloaded though. For $5.00 , I feel I better buy cause we may be onto another shortage someday.

Recently bought Norma, Lapua, a bunch of Jagemann and Nosler. A batch of old Winchester 284 has been excellent in my 25-284. The Jagemann has been very good. Norma as usual. Have not tried the Nosler (opinions anyone?). Red and black bag Winchester not so great. Last Remington has 5 firings (once annealed) and really not impressed with it.

GreggH