SmallCaliberCentral

Fairly new to reloading and have bought some Winchester 300 WSM brass, once I took the brass out and had a closer look I noticed that the neck/mouth seemed bent a little, it wasn't perfectly round. In the end it worked out and the 300 WSM loads were fine. Thinking I just had a bad batch I bought some 204 brass, $25 for 100, and notcied the same thing. Since I haven't bought any other type of brass I was wondering if all brass is like this or is Winchester not a "Top" brand.

I prefer Winchester brass over Remington and not convinced that the more expensive brass is worth the extra cost. I always run new brass through a resizer before loading it. This will make it perfectly round and should not shave off brass from the bullets as they are seated. I also trim the brass, uniform the primer pocket and clean the flash hole out. I believe the bullet manufacturers use the brass as it comes out of the bag for us. I am not a competition shooter and so regular brass meets my needs. Hope this was helpfull.

Most bulk brass is a little beat up. Just run it through your sizing die and the case mouths will be nice and round!

A little brass prep can go a long way towards better accuracy, it just depends on how much time & effort a shooter wants to put into his ammo. Sometimes I go nuts and do a lot of work on my brass, sometimes I just say to heck with it; size it, load it and shoot it...

Winchester makes decent brass. I've used their .308 brass to shoot very competitive scores at 600 yards in NRA Highpower matches, without bothering with a lot of case prep.

Just picked up a couple of hundred Winchester cases in .204 Ruger too - not sure yet how much work I'll have to do on them. Doubt that I'll do much more than just size them, load them and shoot 'em...

I use lots of WW brass in all my rifles, and have over the years. I do full brass prep to all brass, except of course Norma, Lapua and Nosler (which need minimal prep), but for the money, WW has served me well, but do know that you always should at least neck size it and deburr/chamfer the case mouth and never load unsized brass, as the case mouths will be beat up and out of round, and not sized properly for bullet tension as it comes from the bag.