What Brass?

[fishy]

I am going to be investing in some brass for my 204 soon and I was wondering which one would be the best to go after without spending a ton of money on it? I am looking at getting 500 rounds. Right now I have about 100 cases of hornady, but would like your opinion on which one would be best. I would like to stick with Remington, Winchester or Hornady, but would be willing to spend a little more if you think it will save me some frustration in the long run.

Thanks
Mark

[Trent]

I use Winchester for all my brass in all my cartridges. I'm happy with it and will continue to use it in future calibers as well.

1 vote winchester

[K22]

I mainly have Hornady brass in 204, but my vote would go to Remington. That's what I use in all of my other calibers.

1 vote for Remington.

[Ray P]

Plus 1 for winchester in the 204 Ruger. I have tries Nosler and norma brass. You can weight sort winchester and get more bang for the $$.
Just my .02
Later
Ray P

[Bill K]

Either Rem or Win. I always seem to prefer Rem, no real reason, just have always been a rem fan, for over 60 years. Bill K

[Rick in Oregon]

I'll weigh in too FWIW.

My own personal brass preferences run like this:

Best: Nosler (Norma) - All weight sorted, drilled vs. punched flash holes, trimmed, chamfered, deburred. (But you pay accordingly for all this work.)

Yeoman Duty: Winchester or Remington - You must weight sort and completely prep these domestic cases, but the cost is reasonable, and with proper inspection and prepping, they do very well. Some of my very best groups have been shot with prepped WW brass. For most of my varmint calibers, WW has become the bulk of my stash for each rifle.

Worst: Hornady - I've never had so many problem with ANY rifle brass as with this stuff. Primer pockets so tight that a uniformer will not even enter, let alone a match primer being seated properly without any deformation, and weights all over the scale. I'll never use this stuff again....ever.

As long as you have the proper tools and willing to take the time to work the domestic WW or R-P brass, you'll get along just fine, but it really NEEDS the TLC required to make it perform to any degree of precision you might expect out of your rifle. Again, JMO.

[bow shot]

1+ on RIO's comments.

I prefer to buy great brass rather than prep decent brass. More a sign of laziness than wisdom...

[futuretrades]

My personal preference is and will always be R-P brass. When I first got my 204, I bought 500 Winchester brass. I had some problems with it, so I switched to R-P brass. In fact I don't even have any more of the WW brass for my 204, because I sold all of it on this site!

[fishy]

thanks for the info guys!! I learn more and more each day about this reloading thing and in years past I would had never guessed that the kind of brass you use would impact your shooting at much as it can. I dont have all the proper tools for tooling my brass yet, but sometime in the future I will. For all my other calibers I use all winchester brass and its just purely a coicidence that its all the same. I just bought bulk bags from Cabelas, and I just happened to always buy winchester.

[ryutzy]

I echo exactly what Rick said. I'll never buy Hornady again and I now buy Nosler or Lapua cases. The frustrations that I had with WW and Hornady have cured me forever and was not worth the cost savings for cheaper brass because I ended up spending much more money and countless hrs that are now wasted. (Except my new education) Im not saying that you should never buy WW but it does require lots of prep work. Hornadys cases that I've used in 204 and 7MM were so bad that all the prep work did not completely fix the issues and it showed on the target.

[Rick in Oregon]

I'll never buy Hornady again and I now buy Nosler or Lapua cases.

Re: Lapua.......as they now make 20 Tactical cases, I'm hoping it's only a matter of time until they start to make 204 Ruger cases also. There's many more fellows shooting 204's, being a factory round, than 20 Tact's, that's fer sure. (The 20 Tac is an excellent round, and will be a future additon to my .20 cal battery, but the 204R is miles ahead of the Tac in terms of usage.)

[zx10mike]

gutted i know you guys know your stuff and i am sat on more hornady brass than you can shake a stick at.i do love doing the prep work so hopefully can sort them.

[Trent]

What are the problems you fellas are having with WW cases? I use it in five different calibers and have not had any issues at all. In fact it works fantastic. I have one batch of 100 7mm-08 cases that have 20 reloads on them.

[Hotshot]

I've done mostly Win for my prairie dog loads, I have over 2000 loaded. I've been satisfied.
This past winter I was loading for one of my shooting buddies and I couldn't get as much
Win brass as needed so I bought the Rem(at a dollar/100 cheaper) and I was really pleased with it. This seems to go in cycles and sometimes one is good and the other sucks. When I recently loaded 1000 17FB for a new rifle I had no choice but Rem brass, it was great. A couple guys on Saubier forum were complaining how terrible Rem brass is. One thing is for sure in my mind, I have the flash hole tools made by wirelessguy and the Rem brass is way nicer inside than the Win. These comments are from a long time Winchester fan.

[ryutzy]

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.