Brass Selection and Quality by Brand

hey how's it going guys today we are going to talk about brass how to select good quality brass and give you an idea of quality by brand of brass brass is very essential to the quality of your reloads if you're just loading up stuff to go blast and plink that's fine you don't really have to worry about this too much but if you're trying to shoot small groups like I'm going to teach you guys how to do you're gonna have to worry about consistency in your brass so the brass that I have lined up right here I have some new never fired Hornady brass I also have some once fired federal brass you can see on the head stamp here you can see on the head stamp here FC for federal cartridge that's my thing it stands for right here we have some more federal this is simply nickel-plated so as some beginners I've seen asked you can reload nickel-plated brass although it may seem a little bit tougher than regular brass right here we have ww super which stands for Winchester that's Winchester brass and then on the far right over here I have our P which is Remington Peters brass this is from some factory ammunition this is from factory ammunition all of it except for the Hornady stuff right here was from factory ammunition now unfortunately I don't have much experience with the best name in the business when it comes to brass and that is Lapua brass Lapua is supposed to be very consistent with its weight and its wall thickness and just the quality of the brass itself I had a quick phone call with Kurt at Vaughan precision and he's helping supply some of the information in this video some of this stuff may be controversial I'm sure there's plenty of people who will disagree with some of the things I'm about to say but from my perspective this is how I feel that the quality goes by brand now something important is that you want consistency in your breasts so what I would did to start procuring brass from a 243 I would go out and I would buy the same ammunition over and over again federal fusion with the 95 grain coated bullet after buying box after box that starts stacking up and then all of my brass I have to reload is more consistent that way it's all got the same head stamp switching between different head stamps will actually give you different pressure curves and will totally change how your bullets actually shoot and group so it's important to get good consistency something as simple as just switching the brand name or the head stamp on your brass could affect how your group size so once you actually have some fired brass here a few ways you can tell the quality of the brass so we'll start off with something simple and you can weigh it on your powder scale I just use a digital scale throw them on there and I actually came up with a weight and average and standard deviation and the weight for every cartridge here something important you're gonna want to look at the flash holes and as you spin it they need to be centered this one is centered a lot of cheap two to three when they punch the primer hole through it it must just be on a mass production machine and it's actually off-center and it's not doing much good you can see down into the primer pocket of this brass right here it's got a very even corner in it this is a good looking primer pocket I definitely wouldn't have any problems with this looking down on the inside of the case down in there where the primer pocket hole or the flash hole is what they do is they take a pin and push a hole through that in the brass and wasn't it when it pushes that brass out it creates burrs so you can use a deburring tool that reaches down on the case mouth it's just like a small drill bit and it goes in there you spin it around and it cuts off the excess material that's left when they that's left in there when they punch the flash hole in the brass another aspect that's very important of consistency is neck thickness and you can take your calipers or you can take your micrometer and you can measure the neck thickness and rotate the case I measure it in a few spots basically you don't want to get much deviation there you want to keep that number as little as possible down into the thousands of an inch hopefully less than a thousandth of an inch while thickness is important they do make specialized tools for that but because you guys are beginners I wouldn't be too worried about it I don't have a tool to check that and I really don't have much problems right now if I was getting in a serious competition that's definitely something I would consider picking up now I weighed out all these different pieces of brass some of them have primers so I'm not going to say that the weight is important but there is variation in weight between the decaf ones it's interesting to see the difference in the amounts of weights that they weigh that's the standard deviation of the weight of the breast so going by brand Hornady had a standard deviation of one point zero one grains so on average from case to case they're gonna vary from about one grain federal which I buy as hunting ammo I shoot it because it shoots good as a hunting ammo so I get a double use out of it I get a good shooting first round and then when I reload it I can tailor it to whatever I want it to be federal standard deviation is point three to eight so from case to case it's going to vary by point three grains that's pretty good that's actually the best out of all of these right here I was very surprised to see that and I think it's pretty awesome that federal is offering that on their off the shelf stuff you can go pick up a box of it and start reloading it and with these five right here it seemed to be a very consistent I'm sure if I wagered more that might open up a little bit and I might get some different numbers federal nickel brass right here it's the pretty shiny stuff and as a standard deviation of 0.65 Winchester this stuff's affordable you can go to your large sports stores and buy a bag of it but it's a little more inconsistent you're gonna have a standard deviation of 1.5 so on average with these only four cases that I have here they varied by one and a half each on Remington brass RP Remington Peters is what a lot of people refer to this as that had a standard deviation of one point zero nine so just a little bit more standard deviation in the Hornady I was surprised that I didn't see more consistency with my 243 Hornady here but Vaughn precision has been nice enough to measure some pigs brass and send me over some numbers so let's talk about what he measured and how they compare so Kurt is telling me with his brand new Hornady brass out of the box with 65 Creedmoor brass they weigh 140 point eight grains and they give or take two-tenths of a grain between each piece of brass so pretty consistent there I didn't get the exact weight so I don't have the standard deviation but on his Lapua 243 Ackley improved brass he said he measured six cases and between those six they would give or take one tenth of a grain that's why Lapua is top of the line that's why everybody wants them and that's why they're so expensive you get what you pay for in this industry so discussing with Kirk about the different brands of brass Hornady is pretty good brass it's a bit softer than federal is and my own personal experience the nickel cases are harder he told me that Winchester brass seems to be softer and that Remington brass seems to be a little more stiff have a little more spring back so it's just our observations this isn't absolute truth but it gives you a good idea of what you're dealing with when you go to the store try and keep these things in mind that way what may seem like a deal may actually not be I know that you can get a big bag of those pretty cheap but they can only produce them at a cheap cost for reason you have to decide for yourself whether your savings there are worth it or not again this factory loaded ammunition has served me pretty well I've reloaded it quite a few times and I have quite a few pieces of it the downside of it is that you actually have to buy factory loaded ammunition and shoot it so it can definitely be expensive but you're getting that first firing going around the first time if you're shooting like a 300 Win Mag it's gonna be really expensive to do that I know because I've owned one so you'll probably want to just buy a bulk bag of brass some of the other brands out there that I just don't have a sample of you have Norma brass talking with Kurt at von precision about this he and a few of his other buddies up there have actually had experience with it and after three to four firings their primer pockets would loosen up a little bit and I didn't want to hold primers anymore and maybe an indication of soft brass near the head of the case so it's something to be aware of I'm not saying that's exactly what's going to happen every time but it's something that could happen Nosler Kurt has personal experience with this and he said that he has good luck with Nosler obviously it's gonna depend on rifle the rifle and depend what you're loading exactly how your results will vary in my a ar-15 I use PMC brass it's very counterintuitive to me I buy this cheap crappy ammo that does not shoot but when I reload it it outperforms a lot of other brass that I've actually tested it my gun as more for the ar-15 side of things or even the 308 guys you have lake city lake city's supposed to be pretty good brass I think why most people run Lake City is it's affordable and it's easy to find I think that's a big deal for a lot of people which myself included I have quite a bit of Lake City because it's affordable and it's easy to find I don't have any experience with spear and I don't have any experience with Weatherby although whether we make some kind of interesting cartridges I don't know if you have any choice if you have a 3378 I think you're kind of stuck with whether it be brass there Nosler does offer some custom side of things I've looked into building a 280 Remington actually improved and they are the only ones who offer brass for that it's very expensive I could fire form other brands of brass to it or I can decide if I just want to pay upfront and buy the Naza brass well I hope this gave you guys a good idea of what you can expect when looking for bask on your reloading equipment personally I think buying just factory rounds is a great way to go I bought bolt Hornady brass about a hundred of them in a bag maybe these were some kind of reject where they didn't meet their weight specifications for some reason and I got a good deal on them maybe that's what happened well I hope this gives you guys an idea of the different quality by brand of brass and hope it gave you an idea to how to how you want to procure your brass basically if you're gonna shoot groups you want to make sure that they're the same head stamp so if you buy a big bulk bag of a bunch of range brass you're probably only gonna get 20 to 30 of each brand so it may be a little bit difficult if you're shooting rifle I highly suggest just buying one brand buy one bag buy one sky once or buy factory ammunition then you know exactly where it came from and after you fired it the first time it will be fired for your chamber if you choose to next size we're gonna get into that later I appreciate you guys watching I really hope this helped you drop a comment below what you think if you have any questions more than happy to help you also Kurt at von precision has a great YouTube channel lots of great information over there on precision reloading as well or even how to build a savage rifle into an absolute long range monster with a wildcat it's very good stuff very entertaining please check out his channel he set with my channel greatly appreciate your guys's time we will talk to you guys later you

Channel: West Desert Shooter

Views: 10,982

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Id: kB1axLW-tvw

Length: 12min 47sec (767 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 22 2017