SmallCaliberCentral

I just loaded a pile of rounds. after I was done I was weighing completed rounds and I found 10 rounds that weighted in at 6-8 grains heavier than all the rest. I had a few extra cases left as I had run out of primers and ure enough one batch of Hornady brass was heavier than the others. Externally the are identicle. So obviously the only difference is the inside case dimensions.

Now my question is this? how drastic is this going to be changing my load recipe? Not so much for accuracy but more so safety. I understand that 8 grains of brass will occupy significantly less space than 8 grains of powder, but will this change pressues enough?

I'm a VERY novice reloader and I prefer to heavily err on the side of caution.

Because of these issues with Hornady brass I've kinda been steering clear of their brass. I haven't been impressed so I've been staying with Nosler and Lapua. As for the safety of your loads, if you are within proper limits as far as charge weights you should be fine. I dont see any reason why it would be a safety issue.

ive been reloading the hornady brass and havent had any issues.
being the fact i have 30 boxes of factory brass ...might as well use what you got..
i did notice on some loads i get more accuracy at lower loads with hornady brass
vs. the few federal and remington brass i have from Wally world shelves

we have one gunshop in town ....he thinks his brass is made of gold...so ill be stayin
with my once fired brass for now...lol

About that Hornady brass... search on my handle (bow shot) and you'll find that my experience with Hornady brass (from their ammo, not from their boxed brass) was not too good.

The pic on page 5 of the thread, "request: advice for best concentricity" sums it up: inconsistent wall thickness. On another thread, I give the stats on weight (hence VOLUME) variations, and it aint good. You'll see that I comment (and give data, I think) on the Hornady in some other threads.

That said, beware that mightier men than I are very happy with the Hornady brass.

Nosler on the other hand: WOW!! beautiful stuff that eliminated my fliers.

The summation of the matter IMHO (most perfectly put by Rick in Oregon in the afore mentioned post) is this: either buy premium brass ($) or buy the tools to prep domestic brass ($$). Having done both, and being a working joe with neither much time nor money, I go with premium brass.

Thanks for the vote of confidence there, bow shot.

I'm no expert, but I'll offer this: Of all the brands of brass I've tried over the years in all my varmint rifles, Hornady is the absolute worst I've ever used. Weight variations all over the board, and their primer pockets are so undersize, my primer pocket uniformer(s) usually won't even fit in the pocket, let alone try to seat a primer properly with a hand priming tool. The stuff is just not worth the effort to uniform to bring it to proper dimensions in order to load and shoot, at least to me. All the Hornady brass I started out with back when the 204 first came out has all gone down the road a long time ago.

On the other hand as bow shot mentioned, IF you pony up for Nosler (which is Norma, by the way) all or most of these issues disappear (very uniform weight/neck thickness, primer pockets that need no work, drilled vs. punched flash holes that also need zero attention). Someday Lapua will make 204 brass I'm certain, but until then I'll gladly save a few bucks for my high volume rifles and use either WW or R-P brass, which after complete prep and sorting shoots as good of groups as the premium brass such as Nosler.

Anyway, that's been my experience. In the hundreds of thousands of loaded rounds and empty brass in my gun room, you'll not find a single Hornady case.

(I'll add that in a perfect world, ALL my rifle brass would be Lapua, Norma or Nosler. But with over 20 varmint rifles to feed for high volume PD and ground squirrel shooting, this is not possible.....I'm a regular guy too, that's why they make case prep tools! )

"Thanks for the vote of confidence there, bow shot. "

Deserved.

Well thanks for the heads up guys. I have probably 60% hornady brass. Hornady is far more popular for factory ammo around here than any other offer so that's the way it fell.

Just as a very novice reloader, I'm loading 25 grains of RL10X behind a 39gr SBK so when I saw that kind of a variation in my cases, I immediately wanted to confirm that the safety of the round wont be adversely effected. As far as accuracy goes...The yote's likely wont know the difference, but I will probably not reload those cases just out of consistency.

Thanks guys.

Not a big fan of Hornady brass just purchased 100 for my new 204 and find the brass very inconsistent, prefer Laupa but not sure they produce .204 ruger at this point. I can work with the Hornady brass but requires more prep work.