I went to reload a box of once fired Hornady 308 Match brass yesterday, and found that nearly half of them simply would not fit into my shellholder. Anybody seen this before? Is it common, or did I just run across a bad batch of brass?

Troy

I had a bunch of Win 243 cases that did the same thing, extractor grooves were not deep enough. I got the GFY from their customer service. I would call CS and see if they will ship you new ones.

Thanks. This was from factory loaded Superformance ammo that I shot, so I wouldn't expect that they'd do anything about it.

Do you have any of that factory ammo left so you can check how it fits the shell holder before it's fired?

Yes, I have another couple of boxes of it. Just checked, and it does the same thing.

Try another shell holder ….


I've seen the same problem with an occasional case from time to time in other brands. Some shell holders seem to work better than others even when they're supposed to be for a specific case head.

I bet they'll slide right in an RCBS shell holder.

Unfortunately, they won't. That's what I'm using.......

I fixed it. I took the crappy Hornady ammo back to the gun shop and traded it for 2 boxes of Federal.............

I'm not sure Hornady makes their own brass, and there's been a lot of variability in the quality of brass lately.

I have also experienced this issue with Norma brass, the extraction groove was not milled deep enough therefore did not fit the RCBS shell holder. Other than that, most any brass can be made work by sorting by weight, annealing, chamfer/size flash holes , trim to length, turn necks and clean the inside of the necks.

I keep a green box of Lee shellholders - they seem to have more room than the RCBS and Hornady shellholders. I've had this same issue on occasion.

I've had a little different problem with Hornady brass. Had a batch of .204's that the primer pockets were to deep. I've heard of several problems different people have had with Hornady brass. I just made up mind not to use it.

My one experience (recently) was with an order of 100 new Hornady 9.3x62 cases. It was probably the most uneven batch of brass I have ever encountered. Neck thickness varied widely as did the weights of individual cases. I checked the water volume of a few and it varied as widely, as well.

It's been some time, but I was getting 5 or 6 primed Hornady 45-70 cartridges in bags of same same unprimed Winchester brass. The Hornady's were a bit shorter as well. The retailer did exchanges, but it was 130 miles one way back to the store.

That's interesting.

The above descriptions of highly uneven brass match with my recent experiences with Winchester Brass.

Yep.

I just rebarreled a .30-06 I had picked up for a very cheap price because it needed a barrel.

I went to get brass from a local retailer, and they had Hornady and WW in stock. The WW was ten dollars cheaper, but it stayed on the shelf.

My recent experiences with WW components has left me with some doubt in their QC, and a couple of pitted M1 bolts.

Likely unrelated, but, had lots of trouble with Hornady 22-250 brass in factory rounds. Many slit necks so I wrote them off. This was probably 8 or so years ago.