SmallCaliberCentral

RWS is good brass too, but it ain't cheap...

Jim White wrote:RWS is good brass too, but it ain't cheap...

Yes it is Jim, but I believe we're only talking about good brass for the 204, and RWS is not in that game (yet).

ryutzy wrote:Trent--I bought 4 bags of WW brass (200 cases) in .243 Win. I could not even seat a primer in the one bag of cases. I tried about 10 cases in that bag then gave up and wrote off that bag of 50 as bad because of the primer pockets. In the 2nd bag some of the pockets were "normal" and others had the same issue. I also found several cases that the necks were malformed. (as in not usable) At this point I packed them up and sent them all back to Winchester for a refund. They only gave me a 50 dollar credit. I spent more than that on those. Not happy. I replaced them with Lapua. AWESOME. If I buy cheaper brass it will still be Winchester as Hornady brass is unacceptable in my book.

We're all 4 bags of the same lot number? How long ago was that? I'd be pissed about the $50 refund.

No they were not the same lot number. Two bags were the same lot and the other 2 bags were of a different lot. If I remember correctly I tried the other lot after the first bag was bad. The second lot/bag is the one that had malformed necks

I may be one of the guys from saubier, who hates Remington brass. Not in .204, I haven't used enough of it to form an opinion on the stuff, but in .221 Fireball, it's a crapfest.

The last bag of .221 brass I bought, 100 cases, were loaded up with a standard, "book" load that I've used for quite awhile. 100 rounds loaded, 18.5 RL-7, 40gr. VM. Pretty standard load, right? So far, I've had 25 split case necks, and one primer blew out of the case completely. That's only after firing 45 rounds, the other 55 haven't been shot yet. 26/45 isn't a good ratio, in my book.

I think I'll never buy another cartridge, ever, when Remington is the sole supplier of cases. I've never really liked their cases anyway, for example, the .45 ACP stuff is so thin, that you have to re- set your dies to seat a bullet so it won't "telescope" back into the case during the feeding process. Not a problem with Winchester or Federal ACP cases. And the Remingtons split quicker, too.
6BR?, I'd lose 6% of the cases every loading, no matter what. No problems whatsoever with Lapua, but that's to be expected.

I've just had poor results with just about anything Remington produces. 7.5 primers, in the Fireball again, will enlarge group sizes from that rifle by 2.5 times. Not good.

On the other hand, I've had excellent service from most Winchester stuff, especially in .204, so that's what I use.

In my .204 brass and others that I have measured, the Winchester has been quite a bit better than Remington, dimension wise. A lot of the Remington has had the neck wall thickness vary over .0035" on the same case, while some are pretty decent. The Hornady cases I have were poor in most all regards. Glen, I haven't done eniough testing with the 7-1/2 primers in the .204 yet to say how they would be in my stuff, although I do have a really large supply of them. They are working very well in 5.56 NATO pressure loads in my M6 though, they seem to be a lot more restant to flattening than CCI, a very noticable difference in fact.

FWIW, I've had the same issue with WW brass as of late. A year or so ago, I bought 4-bags of WW 204 brass. 2-bags from one lot, 2-bags from another lot, all within a couple of months from each other. Within the LOTS they're OK, but from lot-to-lot, they're terrible.

Well, I ended up going with Remington brass. I bought one bag of 100 for now, and when i get paid next I am going to pick up 3 more, as long as Cabela's doesn't sell the rest that they had on the shelf yesterday. I did do some random measuring and everthing seems to be pretty consistant. Now hopefully I can get some shooting done with the new brass to make sure my loads I worked up with the hornady brass are still good. I got till Memorial weekend to get it done so I think it is feasable. Then off to the dogtown to give them p dogs some heck!!

I just picked up some Nosler custom brass tonight. It isn't cheap, but I want to see if it shows much of a difference over my Remington brass I have been using. If the wind would ever stop blowing here, I could post my results promptly.

I just picked up some Nosler custom brass tonight. It isn't cheap, but I want to see if it shows much of a difference over my Remington brass I have been using. If the wind would ever stop blowing here, I could post my results promptly.