Lapua brass . . .

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Prof Young

New member
So, I can't find any 30-06 off the shelf (imagine that), and am preparing to makes some of my own. The hard to get components, primers, I have and am getting bullets and brass and dies from Midway. Do I need to resize the Laupa brass as they are new?

Life is good.

Prof Young
 
If it is new brass then just run the expander ball through the necks to straighten them out and load them as is. That is what ai would do
 
I use Lapua and Norma and don’t run them through a sizing die, but I do trim and chamfer. If I was worried about the necks being off alignment, I’d probably run them through a Lee collet die.

If, however, I was a long range shooter, I might take more interest in prep of new cases.
 
Yep. That's the same brass they would send to their ammo plant as ready-to-load. The only thing that can go wrong is the annealed necks can dent as the cases pile up. That is handled by sizing the mouth by pushing a mandrel down into it. Sinclair makes a die body for it's neck turning mandrels that it calls an expander die, and you can get one with a mandrel a thousandth (expander) or two (neck turning mandrel) under bullet diameter for doing that. A regular sizing die expander works, too, and I prefer the Redding carbide type for this.
 
Lapua brass was used almost exclusively on the 1,000 yard firing line when I shot in F Class Competition. The only thing I did with new Lapua brass, aside from chamfering the case mouth, was open up the case necks, as they came from the factory with too much case neck tension.

Don
 
Prep them the same way you would any other brass excluding the first tumble . That’s what I did once with a 200ct I had . Ran them though the die fully , checked for trim , primer pockets etc then final tumble .

In the end it appeard nothing was needed though . Well one thing that did help was a much more consistent seating force compared to the other 200ct lot I had and did nothing to .
 
The amount of effort I put into my reloads is proportional to the accuracy of the rifle it will be shot in. In other words sub .5 MOA target rifle gets more attention than a 1.5 MOA hunting rifle which gets more attention than a 2.5 MOA military rifle or a plinker.

That being said I just prepped 100 rounds of Starline brass for my .30 Grendel BR gun. The only prep I did was expand the neck from .264 to .30 in a single pass. I checked the primer pocket depths but they were satisfactory straight from the bag. On the first firing the largest groups were in the .3's and most were in the 2's and 1's
 
I used to size new brass. But I've seen enough evidence to convince me that it is a waste of time and if anything does more harm than good. I stopped doing so years ago and have had no issues with just loading brass out of the box
 
I would get a Lyman M die (for for any 30 cal expadnd on this case) and fix the mouths.

I have never gotten dented case mouth like the so called Lapua brass. I don't find it better than RP.

I would also chamfer and debur it , preferably on a Gerard trimmer (the Trim Trimmer in a drill clamped in a vice is as good or better than the Gerard power trimer)

Only brass that I have seen tested superior to RP class is the Norma.

ps: I just got 500 once fired RP for the 06. Primer pockets starting to loosen up after 20 firings. Not sure what is going to happen to Remington brass down the road. The older establish caliber like 06 were the good stuff, newer ones not so heavy and if they change the brass then PPU for me which I have found to be RP class (and yes I have Lapua in 06 and 308 and I don't find it any better than RP.

PPU may be a tad harder but otherwise good.
 
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