Curious what's the opinions on the different brands of brass.

So I'm looking at helping reload for my Dad 6.5 grendel, the one sight up here in Canada lists Nosler brass at $139.99 for 50. Their is also Lapua brass and 100 for $184.

Is their a difference of quality between different brands? Which brands should I avoid?

Lapua is really good.

Lapua hands down.

lapua , alpha , peterson, all top tier

Geezuz, I need to set up a smuggling ring to Canada.......

Sig brass has been very good to me so far but not sure they make it in Grendel. Not in the same league as Lupua, but still good stuff.

Yeah, you guys down there got it good for sure!

Nosler can be excellent brass. But Lapua is known for its quality and consistency. In your situation, Lapua is also the better buy. No question on buying the Lapua. It's top tier brass, as mentioned above.

Yep, of those two options, Lapua is the better choice. For the Grendel, if you can find some original Alexander Arms brass, that is good quality as well. Starline is also good if you can find it.

Have found several brands of brass have improved considerably in the past several years--not doubt due to demand for better brass.

Wrote about this in Handloader, and then updated the article as Chapter 28 in The Big Book of Gun Gack III, published a couple of years ago. Will just say that there are several brands of brass that are very good these days, including some that many handloaders still disparage.

I don't know about any to avoid, but I have used Lapua and Starline brass with no problems. Rusty Wood in Mission, BC has Starline in stock at $108.50/100

https://www.rustywood.ca/shop/starline-brass-cases/

You shooting the Grendel out of a bolt or gas gun? If gas, get the cheapest brass you can find - as it’s going to beat up or lost long before you can take advantage a high quality brass brings.

CZ 527. Can't hunt with AR's up here

Thanks for the link.

Avoid the Winchester red and black bag stuff. It's garbage. Lapua is good, as we all know. So is older R-P and really old Winchester: WW SUPER. Sig Sauer brass is great, as is Starline (rifle and pistol). There has been mixed reports on Hornady, but I have shot a ton of it with no issues. Norma is known for being slightly "soft" and FC (Federal) has been known to lose primer pockets prematurely. Other brass that you you run into with some factory ammo like GFL (Fiocchi) I've found a lot of off center primer pockets. S&B brass seems to hold up well. PPV is borderline, as I've seen a bunch that was garbage, but some guys love the schidt.

Glad I could help.

I’ve used both Lapua and Starline brass in my CZ-527 6.5 Grendel. I’m very pleased with the Starline brass, enough so that I purchased more of it. I don’t think you’ll be at a disadvantage using Starline rather than Lapua and I have both. My most accurate load to date in my CZ-527 6.5 Grendel uses Starline brass.

No issues with Hornady in my Howa, and it shoots very nicely. Just cranked out 50 of my standard load in Starline, which is a bit lighter, and expect to test them soon. If, as expected there are no issues, I’ll grab more at the earliest opportunity, as the Hornady is on its 3rd and 4th loading in some cases.

This is typical, and good enough for scrawny public land whitetails:

I’m not seeing it. I picked up some R-P brass for my 338 a year or so ago because it was all I could find at the time. Almost unusable. Well it is unusable without bushing dies.

3/4 loadings isn't a thing. Anneal every 3/5 firings and you should get 20 plus firings from brass

unfortunately won't be able to own ARs soon either. Something needs to be done but I digress

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

My experience with Nosler has been hit or miss. I had some .280 AI that wouldn't fit the chamber, of course I can somewhat forgive because the rifle existed before SAMMI adoption. Otherwise, the brass was good after trimming and fire-forming. It lasted quite well and did all I could ask it to do over four different boxes. A batch of .270 Winchester brass from Nosler was missing one piece and another was unusable; certainly not "ready to load" brass as it is advertised.

Jagemann also makes brass for other companies--or at least they have in recent past.

In fact, this has been common with other companies for many years. The old Herter's company sold brass in several "European" cartridges before they became more common among American companies--all made by Norma but head-stamped Herter's. Around 15 years ago I also was told by upper-level folks in both Lapua and Norma that they occasionally made brass for each other, if one of them got in a tight spot. Dunno if that's still occurring.

When Nosler first introduced their brass it was made by various companies, but mainly Norma, which they'd worked with closely for many years. But eventually they decided to make their own, so bought Silver State Armory's machinery and moved it to Oregon. All I've used in recent years has been very good.

This info is included in the previously-mentioned chapter in The Big Book of Gun Gack III, published in 2020--along with specific measurements of brass consistency. But with some major exceptions, brass generally continues to improve.

Thanks Mule Deer for the info. Wish Jagemann would become available again soon. The .22-250, 243Win and 270 Win have been darn good.

GreggH

There's a great pic in the Norma reloading manual of case heads Norma have made over the years and stamped for other companies. Just about every name you can think of is represented, even Winchester and Remington, except some of the newer US brands like Peterson and Jageman etc.

Interesting stuff. I've had such good luck with Lapua consistency/uniformity that it's all I've bought in the last couple years, albeit only '06, 6.5x55, and .223 (but that's all I've needed/wanted to buy). It's satisfying to know that other brands can be their equal, when the time comes to buy more brass. (One of my best ever investments was for a tubing micrometer. Thanks to JB for steering me that way.)

More and more of my shooting is with stuff like single shot target rifle .32-40's and cast bullets, conducted by breech seating wherein the bullet never even touches the cartridge case. One case lasts literally hundreds of shots (no re-sizing involved), and neck wall thickness is a moot point. Gearing up to attempt that with a couple .30 rifles in the spring, but alas it can't be done with jacketed bullets (don't even try to breech seat a jacketed bullet into the rifling) and is a bit unhandy in the woods anyway!

Anecdotally, I'll cry when my stash of old Frankford Arsenal .30 Match brass is depleted. Man, there is some very consistent neck thickness to be had, for practically giveaway prices back in the day. It's been the mainstay of my '06 shooting for decades, and am very glad I snagged a boatload of the stuff long ago. To that end I've been working new Lapua brass into the line-up as a substitute. Don't overlook any 1930's vintage Frankford Arsenal '06 brass either if for some dumb reason you stumble on to any. Some of the best '06 brass ever made, just give it a precautionary annealing before use.