SmallCaliberCentral

I am trying to build some accurate ammo, so I am doing a lot of case prep - it takes time, but I hope it will pay off. So far, I am using only Hornady cases. Just wondering what other .204 shooters prefer.

I prefer R P (remington). Primer pockets last longer than anything else. Personally, I have not had much luck with Hornady brass. But, have not tried any new Hornady brass in 2 years.

I'm using mostly Winchester brass, with a small sample of R-P cases for my two 204's. The neck thickness variance on the WW brass seems the best so far, but the R-P was decent too.

I gave up completly on Hornady brass, as the primer pockets on all the cases I had (emphasis on "had") were so tight, that my primer pocket uniformer either would not even enter the pocket, or if it did, it would bind up and be impossible to turn.

There was a thread quite some time ago discussing this, and the majority of 204 shooters agreed that the pockets on the Hornady brass was not worth the effort to try to uniform. Shooters that do not fully prep their brass need not worry about this, but most of us here are pretty anal about brass prep, so to me at least, it's a deal-breaker in regard to Hornady brass.

Now if Lapua would just get with it and offer 204 brass, we'd be set. I expect Norma to offer it soon, as they make the excellent Nosler 204 brass under their headstamp. I hope there's not a 'non-compete' clause there to prohibit them from making it with the Norma headstamp. Guess we'll see.

Rick, Norma is making brass for the 204. Had some in my hands at Precision Reoading in Mitchell, SD this summer; I did leave it there, though,; a bit pricey for me....$1 a piece. check it out at precisionreloading.com

I use Winchester. I had the same problem as Rick with Hornady, I couldn't uniform the primer pockets. I'm thinking about trying some Nosler brass.

I already found the primer pockets to be insanely hard to uniform - wish I had known that before buying 500 cases.

I've had 100 pieces of Norma brass for about a year now. Very good stuff. And it's not as short as the Nosler.If you ask me, it's just as good as the Lapua I have in other calibers.

Right now I'm working with some Remington brass. Its trimmed and neck sized. I have a Sinclair primer pocket uniformer and it works good with this brass. I also have one of their flash hole uniformers and found out that there is some substantial burrs on the inside of some of the cases. I still have about 40 cases to do before I reload and won't shoot until next weekend. This is the first time I've done this. Just trying to eliminate thos little fliers. Heres the flash hole tool
http://www.sinclairintl.com/cgi-bin/cat ... type=store

Dave

I've got a 1000 Winchester brass. I like them a lot. You will be able to get more reloads out of the Winchesters. I haven't tried the Remington but I've heard that they don't last as long.

The primer pockets in my Win brass (over 1400) is done by #7 reload. I do NOT go over max on the loads either.

The necks on the Win brass...weird...but I believe I average 2 per hundred to split necks.

Since I broke my Sinclair flash hole reamer I use Nosler brass.
The flash holes are prepped, necks trimmed and chamfered and its weight sorted.

I did buy a box of 20 Norma quite a while ago just to see if they were that much better than the Nosler.
They are quality brass but I saw nothing extra special about them compared to the Nosler.
My small batch of Norma are 1.839-1.841 in length. Necks are not chamfered.
Two seperate lots of Nosler are 1.834. I've had no regrets with slightly shorter brass.
I'm still using my original set and I estimate 25 reloads on them. Some very hot loads for some of those.

One day my depriming pin was set a touch short. Resulted in a partially removed primer and brass unable to slide out of the shell holder. Instead of doing the logical thing and resizing with the pin set deeper I grabbed the closest tool and pried it out.
That was the end of my Sinclair tool.
Stupid move Yes but I'll warn the cutter on that tool must be hardened cuz it snapped real easy.
Its a great tool when used for the function it was designed for. A wrecking bar its not

I've been using 200 pieces of Norma brass since it was first introduced about a year ago. Then the price went through the roof. If Nosler brass was a bit longer, I would use it. I just can't justify using brass that is 1.828 out of the box. If you're wanting brass that you don't have to spend a lot of time on, Norma is the way to go. If you can't afford Norma brass buy Remington and perform all the necessary uniforming and annealing to get the consistency you want.

acloco wrote:The primer pockets in my Win brass (over 1400) is done by #7 reload. I do NOT go over max on the loads either.

The necks on the Win brass...weird...but I believe I average 2 per hundred to split necks.

I lost about 3.5% to split necks (WW) on this last PD shoot, and have been planning to switch to R-P cases to see if they're any better.
After the initial losses on my Hornady brass, which was horrendous (almost 6%) I've been using the rest of those cases without any problems whatsoever.

Glenn: Reading your post got me to wondering......I've used WW brass since I first got my first Sako 204 in 2006, 600 pieces to be exact. Most of it has been shot on squirrels and reloaded up to 5 times, and in all that time, I've not lost a single case due to split necks.

I only neck size the cases when new, no F/L sizing or annealing whatever so far, so I'm wondering why you, along with others including Skipper have this split neck issue. Can it be from slightly oversize SAMMI chamber/neck dimensions? I can't think of why others have had such an issue with WW cases splitting necks, when I've had such good fortune with them.

Anyone?.....Anyone?

Rick in Oregon wrote:Glenn: Reading your post got me to wondering......I've used WW brass since I first got my first Sako 204 in 2006, 600 pieces to be exact. Most of it has been shot on squirrels and reloaded up to 5 times, and in all that time, I've not lost a single case due to split necks.

I only neck size the cases when new, no F/L sizing or annealing whatever so far, so I'm wondering why you, along with others including Skipper have this split neck issue. Can it be from slightly oversize SAMMI chamber/neck dimensions? I can't think of why others have had such an issue with WW cases splitting necks, when I've had such good fortune with them.

Anyone?.....Anyone?

I am only neck sizing as well. All of the WW brass with split necks has an obvious issue with even brass thickness - always splits on the thin side.

Both of my 204's are factory barrels, so what I got is what I got.

A reloader does all of that work on the brass only to have a portion of it fail on the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc firing. I am probably in the 6-10% range. I save the split necks now, but did not when I first started reloading the 204. Oh well.