Home Forums Reloading Big Game Rifles LC brass in 308

I'm sure this has been discussed ad nauseam, but here goes again. I got some range brass for 308, all nato stuff. I measured the volume of a few cases using water, some commercial brass I had on hand and the mil spec stuff. A Win case held a grain more by weight than a Lake City case, while another brand case was 2 grains less than the Lake City. So I sorted out the "other" branded stuff and have a decent pile of LC brass. I'm thinking that by using the LC brass I should be pretty close to using data for standard commercial 308 brass. I will work up loads using that data.

My question is, is LC brass generally pretty uniform? It has the manufacture date on the headstamp, does it stay generally the same year to year? I'm not real anal about weighing brass, so I assume it will be fine for my needs.

Generally it is good brass. The primer crimp is a pain, but I have used it for years with good result. I have bought, found or traded for it over time. Generally it all gets deprimed on a universal deprimer. Because a lot of it may have been fired in a belt fed. I run it through a small base sizer after removing the crimp.

I take it the standard FLS die allows too much spring back if it’s been ran through a belt gun? I have a can full of brass that were fired blanks that I unbelted. My plan is to “convert” them to usable brass. What are the chances they’re going to need to be small base resized? I only have standard FLS dies. Not trying to hijack the OP’s thread.

Back in the early 70's when I was competing, I got to know four guys on a Navy team. All were shooting military .308's, using LC Match brass .It was 10 week league, 60 rounds per match. They didn't have to turn in any empty brass.They gave me all of it. About 2500 pieces of LC 69 match. I am still using it today in a Winchester Model 88. IIRC it is close to Norma brass in volume. Never had a problem with it. However, I used the same load, same bullet in regular military brass and it proved to be hot with hard extraction.

Best brass I've ever used was Lake City Nat Match. Used it in 308 and 243. Didn't shoot a whole lot better than some other brass but was consistent as could be. never found anymore and no idea where that came from.

Maybe? maybe not. I figure using a small base die gives me a known starting point. It might be pointless, but the brass needs to be sized. After the first firing it gets neck sized.

I used a hand tool to remove the crimp, full length sized. The brass I have was fired from an AR10, so no belt feed. I'll work up to pressure and hopefully have some decent results.

I have about 400 LC Long Range match brass and weight wise, it’s the most consistent 308 brass I’ve ever had. Love it. Much better than the Federal Gold Medal brass I’ve had.

I have a bucket of LC brass for the ‘06. I primarily use it for cast bullet matches. The LC brass is good stuff.
I separately de-prime once fired military brass. Then I stage the pocket, some will use a drill or such.
I’ve not had to use a small base sizing die on the ‘06 brass. But I’ve had to on 7.62 brass, mainly because most of it may have been shot in a M60. The 7.62 brass has various head stamps.

After all that, I treat the 7.62 and the ‘06 brass like commercial brass.

I’ve noticed the ‘06 brass appears to have had the neck annealed???

A friend manages the production of some LC brass in Missouri. He says the only new LC brass the public gets is what they reject for military use. Doesn't mean it is bad however.

I've been loading LC Match Brass in my 308 for years.

the LC and LC match is my preferred brass for my M1A.
it's kind of a rule of thumb you will load one less grain of powder in LC brass then in normal commercial brass.
I have also got to like and IWI brass for the M1A/ AR-10 type weapons. The IWI is a Canadian military brass and it seems to be even heavier than LC brass to get the same basic velocities with the same bullets and powders I load one less grain in the IWI than the LC. the IWI brass is a bit harder to size especially if it ran through machine gun. it can be done I do it with the standard Hornady die but it is screwed all the way down with a slight bit of pressure or even a fair bit of pressure against the shell holder. and then it'll run just fine in the M1A
..

I bought 500 from Evergreen some years back during a previous dearth. No complaints, and since I rarely push larger rounds very hard, the capacity is not an issue. I also improved my decrimp methodology, so next time it won’t be such a chore.

I think I paid $75 for 500. Now I’d probably just buy Starline and skip the extra work, but at the time it was what I could get. Now it’s JIC stuff.

My experience as well.

Yep. I’ve loaded 42.0 grains of IMR-4064 behind a 168 SMK forever @2600 fps in my M1a. Got this batch of LC LR brass, 2007 vintage and 41.0 grains gets me there now.

Sorry to be the spoiler here. During my time with the M14 in Service Rifle competition, I measured brass for consistency of weight, capacity, concentricity, wall thickness, neck thickness, base squareness and a few other measures. ...my findings were that LC was not that great. LC Match is nothing more than LC Ball with a different headstamp (and no primer crimp). With LC LR, they tried to work with Lake City at process improvement on the brass. It's better but not great. The little bit of Mk316 I've seen has been good though.

This spanned M80 brass from the 1960's. M118 from when it was still being fielded as XM118 in the early 1960's. M59, M852, and M118SB.

Some of the commercial brands during the 1990's when I was going hard at this was decent. WW was decent. IMI was decent. Lapua was hands down the most consistent.

The revelation for me came when I realized that the brass was not the limiting factor in a match M14. A 10-shot MOA M14 shot pretty much the same with LC Brass as it did with Lapua Brass.

When I ran the same ammo through a bolt gun, there was a difference as we stepped back in the distance. ...but LC (ball, match and LR) was not what I would choose.

In the end I shot LC in the 14 because it was free and available to me...and it was tougher so it lasted for more firings (the M14's are notoriously hard on brass)...and I couldn't show a difference on the target with an M14. Still have buckets worth.

Good experience there. I have a bunch of LC match 308 brass. Ran it in my Armalite AR10T, and I didn't notice any better accuracy from it vs. Winchester, Hornady, Lapua, R-P or Sig Sauer. However, it seems like my bolt action gets better accuracy with Sig Sauer brass. Ammo is straighter with Sig vs. LC as well. That could explain the accuracy/precision difference I'm seeing. The LC match brass is thicker, so I figured it would be better to run in my AR10. It works just fine there, just like cheap S&B works just fine in the 6.5 Creedmoor S&W M&P10. I guess it really depends on what the requirements are of the OP, but I probably wouldn't search LC 308 brass out, if there are other brands available. I also run Lapua, and the Sig loads up just as concentric, and the precision is just as good. Hell, even Hornady brass works just fine..

After reading the OP, I think he'll be just fine with the LC brass he found. He doesn't sound overcritical of things like weight sorting or brass thickness and uniformity. If it were me, I'd probably sort by headstamp, and maybe even sort them by weight. Especially if it is range pick up..