I bought some once fired Nosler and was pleasantly surprised that the flash hole had no flash to trim out and they all weighed withing a grain of each other. It looks like good brass but I have only loaded it once so give me a call in a year and I will tell you what I really think of it then. Right off the bat it is better than Winchester or Remington as far as uniformity goes but I don't know how it will hold up over time.

Yep, de-burring of flash holes is one of the reasons for higher prices along with their extremely close weight tolerances. One thing of note; I don't know if all Nosler brass is this way, but my batch has very snug primer pockets and still (five loadings later) require a pretty substantial effort to seat primers.

For my last few handgun loads I ordered some Starline brass. I'm impressed so far. I measured about 10 of each batch (.32 H&R Mag, .45 Auto and .45 Auto Rim) the case lengths out of the box were +/- 0.001". They don't offer a lot of different rifle cartridges right now but they have a good selection of handgun stuff.

I have some Nosler brass and yes it's good stuff !!!

I will definitely purchase more when the need arises.
As SSL said they're already deburred and weight sorted.
As for the Winchester and Remington I prefer the Remington. They seem to last longer. The Winchester seems to be on the hard side and necks tend to split after a firing to two.

Chambered wrote:

...The Winchester seems to be on the hard side and necks tend to split after a firing to two.

Annealing should fix that problem mate I'd even consider annealing them even before firing them for the first time to maybe soften the neck a little.

Agree 100% Vince...... I just don't believe I should have to do that on new brass !!!

I decided to give Winchester one more chance, so I picked up the last bag of .243 the local store had on the shelf. It contained 51 pcs. Once I FL sized them, I discovered that 3 pieces were well short of the trim-to-length of 2.035", the shortest being 2.027. In fact, almost every piece was slightly shorter than 2.035, but not by much. Am I OK to go ahead and use the three pieces in question to load? If not, I can use them for the "dummy rounds" I make and keep for each different bullet I load, once I determine my final cartridge length.

As long as you aren't shooting match at 1000 yards the short cases won't make any difference. The only change will be a bit less neck tension.

Thanks Paul.

No loose primer pockets or damaged shoulders in this batch. I guess I'm plus-1 for the money.

In fact, most of the primers I seated required quite a bit of effort to fully seat them, but I'm still getting used to the RCBS hand priming tool. I'ts not exactly the most comfortable thing I've ever used.

It will become more comfortable as you use it more.

Don't you use your deburring tool on the primer pockets before the first time you put a primer in? It gives an easier entrance.

Deburring we are talking about is cleaning up the flash hole extrusions left from the drilling or punching process on the inside of the case and, yes, should be done when first preparing new brass. Primer fit would be in the pocket itself and would use a reamer or other method of removing the crimp from primarily military brass. This shouldn't be an issue with commercial brass.

Aloysius wrote:

Don't you use your deburring tool on the primer pockets before the first time you put a primer in? It gives an easier entrance.

I've never done anything to the primer pocket itself. I have a flash hole deburring/uniforming tool I use, but as mentioned, that is used on the inside of the case.

I believe this is just a case of having a fairly new (to me) priming process. I used the priming function of my turret press for years, but picked up a Rock Chucker and don't want to handle each primer if I don't need to. My wife got me the hand primer as a gift last year. It works great, but isn't very comfortable in my hand.

A friend dropped off his .300 Win Mag Federal brass that he wants me to use to work up some loads for him. He doesn't remember the original factory loads for all of it though. Some of it has a different headstamp than the rest, including what I assume is a date stamp.

Most of it just has "FC 300 Win Mag" The pieces in question have "FC 13 300 Win Mag"

From my online research, this would indicate a round loaded for the military, but he claims to have never used anything other than commercially available hunting ammo in his rifle. i haven't done anything to it other than knock ou the primers, tumble it, clean up the primer pockets and flash holes. There is no primer crimp either.

Does anyone have any experience with these? Can I mix them in with the others?

Compare the volume. Weigh the max. water content. When volumes are the same then for me the cases are the same. You can always check afterwards on the range.