Thoughts on new brass...

I've usually purchased Winchester brass in the past. It seems to me that their QC has been in the dumper as of late. From my experience, somewhere around 5% of new cases are unusable, due to various reasons including extremely loose primer pockets all the way up to an actual dent in in a shoulder so deep that I was amazed that the case in question was not rejected at some point in the manufacturing process.

In this part of the world, new Winchester brass seems to be in short supply,perhaps due to their poor QC measures. Hornady and Nosler are readily available however. Hornady brass is priced roughly 1.5 times the price of Winchester and Nosler is around double.

Does anyone have any experience with Hornady or Nosler?

Should I just deal with Winchester's poor quality and accept that 5% may be rejects?

It depends. I have been using Winchester brass for years without any significant issues. If I encountered 5 percent defects in new brass, I would contact Winchester customer service and address those concerns.

Not sure who makes Hornady brass, but again I have used it with no problems. Nosler brass is OK, but I only use it when I pick up once-fired brass at the range. So it depends. All the best...
Gil

IN .223 brass - Winchester quality has recently improved from what the other shooters are telling me but it is not the stellar product form 8-10 years ago.

Nosler and Hornady .223 brass I have used were top quality stuff.

What calibers are you looking for?

Nosler makes some quality brass. The Winchester I have is about 8 years old so maybe I have some of the good stuff.

Dawgdad wrote:

IN .223 brass - Winchester quality has recently improved from what the other shooters are telling me but it is not the stellar product form 8-10 years ago. Nosler and Hornady .223 brass I have used were top quality stuff. What calibers are you looking for?

I was looking to pick up some more .243 Win brass and start working up a new load. I have some Barnes 80 gr TTSX, 85 gr TSX, and 95 gr Nosler Partitions.

HJ, I started with all new Remington components (price and availability driven) when I started loading for my .243 and I had no complaints with the quality. I bought some Winchester brass when it was on special and I found inconsistencies with QC. I rang Winchester Australia, gave them the relevant batch ID numbers and they happily replaced the entire lot I purchased, no questions asked.

I am still using the Remington brass after around 5 loading and so long as I anneal and trim regularly I expect to get 10 or more loading out of this brass.

With my .223 I find that the Winchester brass is all good quality without any perceivable QC problems. The odd one or two I come across with smallish dents usually correct themselves with resizing and fire forming.

I picked up a box of Nosler .300 Win Mag brass sometime last year and was impressed with it out of the box, but haven't used any yet. My original thought was to use it for my hunting loads, but at $75.00 per 50, I would hate to accidentally leave some behind in the field.

The only Hornady brass I have is once fired, mostly by me, but some that were picked-up at the range.

Then there's the subject of Federal brass, but that may have already been discussed in a different thread (I have a LOT of it).

Interesting.
I have had zero problems with Winchester brass, or now I think of it Federal brass and I have a fair number of both in various calibers.
I haven't used new hornady or nozler.
I do however have 100 Lapua .308 ready to use once the 200 or so Federal I have in use vapourizes or whatever it is that Federal does.
Cheers

I have loaded a bunch of older Winchester, Remington (RP), Hornady and Frontier .243. no issues with any of it. Not much difference in case weight or capacity either.

hunterjoe21 wrote:

I was looking to pick up some more .243 Win brass and start working up a new load. I have some Barnes 80 gr TTSX, 85 gr TSX, and 95 gr Nosler Partitions.

I shot all the monolithic bullets through the .243, e.g., TSX, TTSX, GMX, and E-Tip. The E-Tip never worked in any caliber (too long in the .243). The TTSX and GMX were death rays right out of the chocks. The TSX however, in .243, I couldn't get to group under 2 MOA no matter what powder, brass or COAL I tried. If you find a sweet spot for the 85 TSX, please let me know as they have done great in other calibers for me.

dhc4ever wrote:

I do however have 100 Lapua .308 ready to use once the 200 or so Federal I have in use vapourizes or whatever it is that Federal does.

The Federal Brass I used in .270 and .308 gave me problems. It has too much springs back during resizing. When I set-up my dies for Rem and Win brass, the resized Federals won't chamber cleanly 1/2 the time. In the 6.8mm, Federal Brass is the first to get scrapped, often only getting 3 reloads. Because of this, I stopped using it.

slimjim wrote:

hunterjoe21 wrote: I was looking to pick up some more .243 Win brass and start working up a new load. I have some Barnes 80 gr TTSX, 85 gr TSX, and 95 gr Nosler Partitions. I shot all the monolithic bullets through the .243, e.g., TSX, TTSX, GMX, and E-Tip. The E-Tip never worked in any caliber (too long in the .243). The TTSX and GMX were death rays right out of the chocks. The TSX however, in .243, I couldn't get to group under 2 MOA no matter what powder, brass or COAL I tried. If you find a sweet spot for the 85 TSX, please let me know as they have done great in other calibers for me.

Load data from Barnes has changed since they published their last book. They used to recommend Ramshot Hunter for use in the .243 with the TSX, so bought a pound of that. I guess I should have checked their website before I went to the store, they now recommend Superformance for both the TTSX and the TSX.

Which powder did you use for your TTSX load?

Also, in another thread, you mentioned using magnum primers for everything. Does that include the .243 or were you limiting that to the .270 and 6.8?

I checked my "brass drawer" again tonight. I have right around 300 pcs of Federal .308. I bought 200 of them from a small shop back in Ohio. The owner claimed they were all Federal Gold Metal Match that he had fired himself. I have no idea if there's a difference in the GMM brass vs. their other stuff, but the price was right. I gave him $25 for the lot. Figured if I got 2-3 loading out of them I couldn't go wrong.Decapped, primer pockets cleaned, tumbled, and there they sit.

70 pcs of RP once fired
38 Hornady
47 Winchester
And I found some PMC brass I forgot about. 60 pcs. I don't know who makes it for PMC, but with all the other stuff I have, if it went in the scrap bucket, I probably would never miss it.

I've also had no problems with Winchester brass.

Nosler brass is quite good but expensive. Ditto on Lapua brass.

A brass test was done for Handloader magazine a few years ago. Guess what, Remington brass was near the top as far as reloads before failure went.

I tend to favor Remington brass over the years for both rifle and handgun loads except for my .223s where I use Lake City "match" brass that I got in a large quantity quite some time ago. I haven't had much luck with Federal or Winchester when it comes to durability. Of course I really have no choice for my .17 Remingtons! I did buy a sampling of Nosler brass for my .22/250 Remington with very good results.