Suggested brass

N

ninosdemente

New member
I have been picking up Remington, FC brass for .223 and Winchester, FC, Remington, for .380/9mm from range. I have own Winchester, Remington and Herters for both handguns. For 30-06 Winchester, Remington and Herters (my own).

I have done some research and Lapua has come up as number 1 and Winchester as a "budget" case.

Perhaps many would have their own list but is there some that most agree are in the top list for reloading and those that are a no, no.?

I have thrown out Blazer, PMC, Ppu among other country made brass.
 
I agree with your initial choice.
Lapua is very high quality and durable.Its also expensive.The durability can balance the cost,to a degree.
That's IF you are recovering all your brass.

When I buy virgin brass I choose WW. IMO,its good stuff,durable,with minimum prep. I don't agonize over a few lost pieces.

Starline is very good pistol brass.Its my preferred source.They are making some rifle brass. I have not tried it.

Hornady...I'm grateful to Hornady for making some otherwise unobtainable brass.Off the topof my head,30-40 Krag,300 Savage,.405 Win,I believe .250 Savage,and either 25-20 or 32-20.IMO,thats huge. Thanks,Hornady!

I have heard,but not experienced,that the Hornady brass COULD,MAYBE be a touch soft. I don't know.

IF you are going into high round count competition,an argument can be made for buying bulk fired brass.Example,a 5 gallon bucket for $140 or so,5.56.

You have to sort/inspect. It will be gungy. Pins and Lemon shine.It will mostly be crimped primers. Another tooland process.
Crimps truly do mean once fired.I got mostly Lake City and WC

Those are good.The rest,a mix of good and not so good.Overall,one way to get several thousand rounds of brass if you need it.

IMO,buying a lot of 500 or 1000 virgin brass and a few good 50 round cartridge boxes is a great start to serious reloading. Eliminate variables.Control your processes (Hat tip,Mr Deming).A few 50 rd loading blocks help. Components come in 100 lots.

Loading a 200 rd lot of brass as two groups of 100 rds works out great.You always have 100 to shoot,and another 100 to load,or have ready.
Organized in cartridge boxes,labeled with data.Records are easy to keep.Keep them!

You always know how many loadings,when trimmed,etc. Good habits.
 
I find the quality of the brass follows the price of loaded ammo. I avoid the brass of cheap ammo manufacturers. I do not use S&B,PPU and others. I find the biggest problem is consistency of primer pockets.
 
What do you intend to do with the brass? Competition, or just punching paper or ???. One of my 223's prefers FC, then RP. Another prefers LC, and it does not really care if all from the same yr/lot or not. These are Pdog bolt guns, both will shot .5" groups on a consistent basis. Another 223 seems to like PMC brass for one load

I have purchased 1x brass from online sources, processed it and it shoots just as well (for my purposes) as the range pick up I process and load. I use Hornady, PPU, GFL, & other brands that are range pu for testing since I don't have enough of it to load up the # of rounds for a pdog trip.
 
i've used Lapua brass in the past. Lapua brass may be worth the money to an advanced bench rest shooter; to me it is definitely not worth the money.

Yesterday i took some carefully re-loaded mixed case .223 re-loads to the range. Cases were Remington, Winchester and Lake City. At the bench i made no attempt to sort the brass by make. Fired five 5 shot groups from my Remington 700 rifle at 125 yards. Average group size was just over 1 1/8". Then i fired one ten shot group using Lake City brass that measured just over 1 1/4".
 
I have bought and used several different brands of rifle brass and Lapua is my number 1 choice now and it is all I buy. The less expensive brass turned out to be the most expensive when I factored in the number of reloadings. Lapua might be twice the price but it lasts
 
At the moment used for paper. The 30-06 I'm using for hunting. I'm still in the learning and starting out... Which at the moment picking up what I can but do sort through them. I do find people use more of the Remington for the 223. At least where I go. Also the LC, but since I don't have a 5.56, there just sitting in a jar. To bad I can't understand 6.5 creedmor,bthats the next rifle I want.

The hand gun are more Winchester and Remington that I find.

I don't buy the "better" brass factory ammo as I don't have skills yet and don't see the reason to do so either for the moment. Would like to though, just not yet.
 
Since I only load for handguns, I have no opinion regarding rifle brass. For handguns, my preferred pickup brass is Winchester. Second choice is Remington (R-P headstamp). Third choice is federal.

I don't like Blazer Brass brass. I don't recall ever using Sellier & Bellot but, considering that S&B is reported to be the producer of some Winchester "white box" ammo, I wouldn't run away from it. S&B factory ammo has always been good in my guns.
 
I've had good luck in handguns with S&B and PMC brass. I haven't tried PPU yet, but have no reason to believe it isn't good brass.

My first choice is Winchester Military, bit darn near all of them work well.
 
I have heard,but not experienced,that the Hornady brass COULD,MAYBE be a touch soft. I don't know.
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We have many reloaders that do not measure before and again after. And then we have reloaders that do not or can not measure the diameter of the case head. With all of that added to the part reloaders have with understanding they can not move the shoulder back with a die with case body support; and we have bumping. I can bump, the thing I can not do is bump with a press that does not cam over.

F. Guffey
 
For 223, Lapua and Norma probably are the most precise and consistent you can get.

A newer (to the public) player is ADG, but they don't have 223 available yet, so this is for future reference. They claim their brass is designed for durability, being a little thicker than average and have a double-struck head that is extra hard. They are about as costly as Lapua. They have no flash hole burrs and have pretty good wall runout. You can buy them with or without the annealing stains left intact. Unlike Lapua, they are not chamfered and deburred, but also unlike Lapua or Norma or anyone else I am aware of, all the cases they sell you in a lot come off the same set of tooling for maximum consistency. They are made in Kentucky.
 
I rarely buy new brass. I will buy new for revolver brass cause it's so easy to get the brass back. Those are always starline.

My usual thing when I get a new gun is to shoot factory for a while and use that brass to get me started. That way I can have fun while collecting the brass :).

Rifle brass it depends. I have to buy brass for 45/70 and 7.62x39 (yeah i know I'm weird) that is starline and ppu respectively. 5.56 i got enough range brass to reload every day for a year. On those i get mostly LC and fc so its hard to compare. I hate removing crimps but it's what I got.

308 win I prefer aguila brass actually. Followed by federal.

So my ranking would be:
Pistol-
1. Starline
2. Perfecta
3. Geko
4.ppu
5. Federal
6.winchester
7. Blazer
8. Everything else
Rifle-
1.perfecta
2.aguila
3.federal
4.geko
5.ppu
6. Starline

I list starline so low on rifle cause the 45-70 I get I have to swage the primer pockets or the primer won't seat. But otherwise good.
 
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308 win I prefer aguila brass actually. Followed by federal.
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Reminds me of the pendulum, there was a time when the pendulum went the other way and reloaders made a good case for Winchester cases. And then they started that old story about military cases being thicker because they were heavier; I did not fall for that because I knew that old story could only be a 'half-truth'. Even the half-truth convinced me my Remington 30/06 cases had an advantage because of the half truth,

And then I had Norma cases and S&W cases and Browning cases.

F. Guffey
 
Lapua isn't any better than any other brand just because it's more expensive. It's expensive because it comes from Finland and there are duties on stuff from Europe(nothing to do with Trump. He doesn't know what he's talking about.) plus the exchange rate. 1 EUR is worth $1.16195 US.
The only brand that has issues is Federal and that's about it being softer than other brands(not Hornady). That only means it doesn't last as long. Doesn't apply to them operating FC. FC might have primer crimping due to it being military and used in MG's.
"...from range..." That's the primary issue. You have no idea what has been done to it or how many times. The previous owner may have loaded it with +P or worse hot loads multiple times. Or trimmed it because somebody told him he should(pistol brass rarely requires trimming). Range brass is a 100% unknown.
"...380/9mm..." Isn't the same thing.
"...Blazer, PMC, PPU..." Blazer if it's brass is CCI. Good stuff. PMC is Korean and is also good brass. PPU is Prvi Partizan and is also good stuff.
 
I have yet to run the string out, but I don't think Lapua is any better and in fact, I have gotten brand new Lapua (on sale onlyt!) with case mouths badly dented and had to run em through the M die before I could use (I have gotten once fired brass in fine shape as well as PPU)

My own conclusion is that RP, Lapua, PPU are about the same quality in rifle and more specifically 30 caliber (more or less the older cartdige in RP are solid, some of the newer ones are much lighter than counterparts)

While I can't find the link, I came across a endurance test of brass (must have had 15 of them on the list)

The one that stood out was Norma, it truly did last.

Lapua was in the RP range.

I have shot them side by side same load (they average weight out the same) and I see no difference.

At least in 30-06, 308 and 7.5 Swiss, PPU has held up the same as RP with my current re-load methods.

Pistol may well be a different story.

At least around here, you can pick up all the 223 you want so its not an issue, replace it if and when its gone with previous gathered and sorted types.
 
For 9mm Amerc, Maxxtech, Freedom Munitions, Xtreme, and Ammoland had the stepped cases for a while. Because of these I started sorting my brass about 12 years ago. I added TulAmmo, Wolf, B-West, SK, TCW, and TPZ as headstamps that get immediately tossed in the recycle bin - they all are very soft brass. I know some people that have loaded these headstamps but the headaches it can cause it is just not worth it.

I will load Agila, CBC, and Perfecta brass once to be used at an indoor range that has a slanted floor that tends to push most brass in front of the firing line. I have had an Agila case separate at the knurling on about the 5th reload. The CBC and Perfecta primer pocket gets too loose to hold a primer after the third or fourth reloading.

For 45 I had been using the same brass since the early 90's and the rims were fairly chewed up so they hit the re-cycle bin. When the Blazer small primer came out I ended up getting 1k of the factory ammo and started using that. If I sweep up any LP I trade it out with one of a shooting buddy who hates the SP. Everything I have in 45 is now SP.

For rifle I like the once fired NATO cases for 223. I also shoot 6.8SPC and for that I prefer S&B but I will use anything I can find for plinking ammo.

Every time I go to the range I know what brass I have loaded up. If anything other than that headstamp makes it back to my bench I will give it a close examination before I add it to my inventory.
 
For rifle reloading i use Lapua and Norma. I can get good life and good accuracy from Rem and WW, but they need prep work for best accuracy. I finally got tired of turning necks and the other prep, so went to Lapua and Norma. Nosler is also primo brass, but I don’t think it lasts as long. I have no hard data to prove any of the above. Just based on years of loading and shooting.

For the record, I think Norma is the longest lasting brass.
 
For my wife's 223 i'm using the ole 5.56 LC brass.
For 30-06, i had someone at the range hand me a bag of 200 military brass. From Greece i think.
Handgun, 9mm & 45ACP i use mixed brass. And i'm not averted to using small primer 45.

For 7mm-08 AI, 257 Roberts, 7mm Rem Mag i use PPU. (257 Roberts is 7mm Mauser brass that i neck down).
284 Win i use Norma.
250 Savage and 280 Rem i'm using Hornady.

All depends on your prep.
 
Excellent spot to post my observations. I resized a large quantity of fired brass yesterday. I began to notice that most rounds passed through the sizing die smoothly, but quite a few would bind at the bottom of the stroke, large increase in force required to complete the stroke. On examination, the brass was compressing just above the Primer hole, appearing as a slightly raised ridge that will catch a gloved fingernail. More than 80% of these shells were Blazer headstamp. Others that did the same...PPU, Herters, IMI, and an odd FC.

At this point I started throwing out the Blazer. With nearly 2,000 9mm cases, I don’t need to reload anything that “didn’t feel right”.
 
markr6754, that's more a byproduct of being fired in a sloppy, or possibly 'unsupported' chamber, than it is an indication of brass quality.
For example: 9mm brass stamped Blazer, CCI, Federal, Speer, and FC (multiple variations of markings) are all made on the same equipment, in the same factories, with the same raw material.

A reference from an old post, mentioning the marking variations and what they mean. The same can apply to the other brands mentioned above:
FC
FC●
●FC
●FC●
FC●●
Federal●
●Federal
●Federal●
Federal

The dots indicate extruded cases, rather than drawn. The number and location of the dots indicate the production facility.
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For rifle brass, I run what I can get. I try to buy quality when it matters; but it doesn't always matter.
For .223 Rem / 5.56 in an AR, I run range pickup brass. I sort and inspect well, trim as required, and that's good enough.
For other AR cartridges, like 6x45mm, I run mostly my own once-fired brass from factory .223 ammo (yes, I buy factory on occasion). But I am not afraid to inspect and sort range brass if I find a decent quantity at one time, of what appears to be the same lot, fired in the same rifle.

Bolt guns, and cartridges where I care more...
Lapua, Norma, Hornady (particularly for the less common cartridges), and PPU are normally at the top, or close to the top of the list.
Starline is usually pretty decent, but they turned me off after I got a few lots of .458 SOCOM, .32 H&R, and .44 Mag that were sized completely wrong and had not been annealed after final forming/drawing. So, the mouths were oversized, and the brass was work-hardened quite badly. I have very little experience with their bottle-neck rifle brass.

If I know I'm going to be weight-sorting and uniforming a bunch of cases (300-1,000), I'll buy Win or R-P. By the time I'm done, they're nearly as good as Lapua ... it's just that I had to do the work, instead of paying Lapua to handle it.

In no way am I saying that Win or R-P are terrible, but I'm not saying that they're good, either. You asked for opinions, and the above (and below) statements are exactly that: My opinions and preferences on the mentioned brands of brass.


I avoid PMC, S&B, and Federal rifle brass. In my experience, Federal is too inconsistent and too soft. S&B is just low quality and 'sticky' to resize. PMC's primer pockets and flash holes irritated me one too many times. I gave it ALL away, and haven't reloaded a PMC rifle case in the last 8 years.
 
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