Reloading brass

I really like the Lapua brass that I have.
It is the most consistent stuff I have found, off the shelf.

However...
If you have the time, you can turn nearly any other mediocre brand into a decent lot of brass by buying in bulk, uniforming, and sorting.
I have a lot of R-P .30-06 that shoots just as well as my Lapua. I just had to buy 600 pieces, size to remove dents, uniform primer pockets, deburr flash holes, trim to a uniform length, chamfer and deburr case mouths, weight sort, throw out the extreme weights, further sort by variations in head stamp (different machines), throw some more oddities into the reject pile, and then divide the remainder into lots that must be kept together and carefully tracked to avoid mixing the 195.6 gr brass with the 196.2 gr brass...
(And that's not even the good way to sort. To do it properly, one should be sorting by case capacity in grains H2O, rather than case weight.)

Takes time and energy.
Is your time worth more than the cost of an upgrade to Lapua?
 
Frankenmauser just reminded me why I quit doing all that Case prep. I still have bags of Win and R-P that are fully prepped, neck turned, and weight sorted. I have the gear needed and the time, but just ran out of prep energy. So much easier to just buy Norma, Lapua, and Nosler.

That said, I am still using some prepped Win brass in my 220 Swift, and have been for a number of years. Shoots great, though with the money I spent having a nationally known gunsmith tune the action and rebarrel and bed it, it ought to shoot good. That goes back to my first comment a few days ago, saying that if you want an accurate rifle, buy one (or have one built). Good or prepped brass can only do so much toward accuracy improvement.
 
I can't see much difference in brass if you're going to work it. I bought expensive brass that wouldn't allow a primer to seat. My last batch of Federal brass has terrible flash holes but just prep it and it's as good as any. I don't turn necks just sort them out so I get the correct insert for my neck tension. - Powder is a different story. Your guess is as good as mine.
 
603Country,

You are leaving out: …or build one yourself…as some of us like to do.:D

Of course, you sometimes just get lucky with an off-the-shelf gun.
 
Been reloading close to 50yrs now and do not understand what all this prep you guy's are talking about is. I get new brass and I shoot it the way it come's mostly. Some times I find a case that needs to go over the expander die to round up but what is the rest? To much prep work involved, just don't get it!
 
Don Fisher wrote:
Been reloading close to 50yrs now and do not understand what all this prep you guy's are talking about is. I get new brass and I shoot it the way it come's mostly.
Click to expand...

Well that's perhaps the biggest difference right there. With the exception of some 38 Special brass and an odd lot of Norma 30 Carbine brass, everything I use is previously fired. And previously fired brass demands cleaning in order to get it ready for a proper visual inspection of the case. And if the brass is ex-military (or commercial brass made by a military contractor) the primers may have been crimped in place necessitating that the crimp be removed either by swaging or reaming. And once the reaming is done, the primer pocket has to be cleaned of the brass shavings. So, yes, there can be a lot to do to get previously-fired brass ready to go back into the reloading stream.

If your point was to rhetorically ask why don't we all just join you and buy new brass, the answer is simple: 1) Cost, and 2) Safety. As to cost, looking at MidwayUSA, new 223 Remington brass costs between 24 and 75 cents each. I pay 3 to 4 cents per piece for previously fired 223 brass. That's an order of magnitude difference and adds up quickly. The safety aspect comes from the fact that manufacturing defects that manifest under high pressure are most likely to appear on first firing, not second or third.

And, finally, yes, if I was to keep track of my costs on a full absorption basis and account for my time at any reasonable level, it would probably be cheaper to buy brass (or factory ammunition). It took me an hour yesterday to decap 400 rounds. At my current billing rate, that alone would have added about 18 cents to the "cost" of each loaded round. But, I don't include my time in any accounting because I don't reload ammunition to save money; but to save my sanity so that I can go back out into the real world and do the job that pays the bills.
 
Unclenick, it is worse than you think in terms of my luck with this rifle. Mounted atop it is a Simmons Whitetail Classic I paid $100 for and it’s mounted with $20 no name rings. All that accounted for I get nearly 1 MOA at 600 yards with ball ammo. I shoulda bought lottery tickets that day instead of a gun.
 
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