Winchester brass problems (way too short)

[rayfromtx]

Ah no go gauge, I see. My go gauge measures 1.539 at the shoulder and 1.550 at the datum line. It seems odd to me that your brass measures 1.539 at the datum line. That would seem to mean that you have a short chamber or the spring back is like .012.

I don't think there's anything wrong with your rifle.

I can set my headspace to match my brass and there would be no problem with mine either unless the die won't set the shoulder back enough to match my head space.

[Arizona Hunter]

Recently I bought some Win brass (Thats all I could get) for my 6.5 Swede and out of 100 cases I bet I had to trim 98 of them.

But with the Rem .204 cases I only need to trim about 2 of 100.

[rayfromtx]

Here's an update to this old thread. Originally the 500 pcs of brass were measuring 1.533" with a stonypoint comparator with the 330 insert. I set up the headspace a little short of saami specs and well short of my go guage. The fired brass come out of the chamber at 1.550" which is quite a bit of growth for new brass in a short chamber.

I just got a new batch of brass and checked it for length. Out of the bag it measures 1.549 with the stonypoint. This is .016 longer than the last batch. This means it will just fit my short chamber with minimal growth on it's first firing. I knew I wasn't crazy before about the brass being short. WW has poor quality control in my opinion but their brass is cheap. i would love to see Lapua put out brass for this caliber.

This batch of brass has a lot of variance in overall length as well but I will shoot once before trimming. The batch number of this new batch is 1YG11.

[jo191145]

Buying brass is definitely a crap shoot. Sure, you buy the best and the odds are stacked in your favor.
Concerning your old question I did not answer. My 600pcs of Win 204 came through with .004 neck thickness variations.
I turned all 600 pcs to about 80% clean and started fireforming. Found huge variations in neck tension even though they had been resized out of the bag. Tried some after fireforming hoping the tension issues would go away with subsequent sizings. Nope. Annealed a bunch of them. Nope, still no good.
Turned me off Win brass for quite awhile.

I picked up 200pcs of Win 223 brass at the grand opening of a Cabelas near me. Just opened those bags two weeks ago and was quite surprised at the quality. Less than .001 variations in neck thickness and long enough to trim before firing without feeling guilty. I got lucky. Thats actually less variation than I got with the Lapua 6.5x284 brass I have. By contrast I have two older bags of Remington 223 brass I never even bothered trying. .004 variations in them too.

Headspace on the new Win brass is probably a little short. Not really a concern. I decided to try the BR technique of .004 crush fit fireforming on that brass to see what happens so I set my tubes headspace accordingly. Ended up with .003 crush and .002 bolt head clearance. I do not have a 223 go guage but factory ammo will not chamber. A little less volume but powder choice should help there.
Its winter, time to do weird things.