Your experiences with winchester brass please?

3macs1 said:
This may help Nomad
http://www.canadiangunnutz.com/forum/showthread.php?830346-Favorite-brass&highlight=winchester+brass

I have some 20 year old winchester brass that is excellent , new stuff I would never buy again so to me unless you can buy 1x old vintage stock I would not be buying it.
I know the Lapua is expensive and it took me a bit to buy some but now I will buy nothing else if they make it in the caliper I am looking for. take care
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Man i wish i had kept all the brass i had stockpiled.Not really sure why but i saved all my casings for years and gave them all away a while back.Probably had a lifetime supply of .270 win lol.If i only knew then.
 
nomad 68 said:
I'm new to the whole thing and currently attempting to build a good supply of brass.The winchester seems to have poor reviews on line.Is it to be avoided if possible?Thanks
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What is the goal of your shooting? plinking, hunting, precision long range.
What type of firearms? pistol, bolt action rifle, semi auto.

For pistol or semi auto rifle almost any ammo that is in good shape will do. I sort by headstamp.

For plinking anything that is in good condition that I can pick up for free and runs well in my guns.
For hunting (even though I don't hunt) any Winchester, Federal, Hornady, Remington etc. will do if it is well sorted for weight and volume after being prepped.

My idea of prepped if it is range pickup is full length sized, deprimed, primer pocket uniformed, flash hole deburred, trimmed to minimum length and wet tumbled.

For precision ammo I use Lapua but I wouldn't spend the money on it if the rifle can't get otherwise reasonable accuracy.
 
I use Lapua in my .308 for less time spent sizing and sorting, but in my huntng rifles I use any brass, Winchester included. Depends on your intended use I suppose, but more likely on your expected results. My 2cents
 
I have a bunch of win and rem brass, but I've gradually made the switch over to IVI for the calibres I reload. I'm and IVI fanboy, for sure, but it's the best stuff I've used in .308 and .303. Old PRVI (NNY headstamp) is the closest to mil brass I can get in 6.5, so that's where I'm at. I even have some nickel plated IVI .38 special brass, but not enough to shoot. The search continues!


In answer to your question, though, Winchester brass is just fine. I've got some WW Super .303 that's been reloaded a half dozen times and hasn't even needed to be trimmed yet after the first firing.
 
thump_rrr said:
What is the goal of your shooting? plinking, hunting, precision long range.
What type of firearms? pistol, bolt action rifle, semi auto.

For pistol or semi auto rifle almost any ammo that is in good shape will do. I sort by headstamp.

For plinking anything that is in good condition that I can pick up for free and runs well in my guns.
For hunting (even though I don't hunt) any Winchester, Federal, Hornady, Remington etc. will do if it is well sorted for weight and volume after being prepped.

My idea of prepped if it is range pickup is full length sized, deprimed, primer pocket uniformed, flash hole deburred, trimmed to minimum length and wet tumbled.

For precision ammo I use Lapua but I wouldn't spend the money on it if the rifle can't get otherwise reasonable accuracy.
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Predominately for hunting but for playing around at the range as well.
 
I use nothing but Win brass it is the hardest and lightest brass out there in my experience. It will take more pressure than any other brand and still hold primers. Yes quality has gone down but even if you have to cull 20% of new cases they are still better and cheaper than Lapua IMHO.
 
c-fbmi said:
I use nothing but Win brass it is the hardest and lightest brass out there in my experience. It will take more pressure than any other brand and still hold primers. Yes quality has gone down but even if you have to cull 20% of new cases they are still better and cheaper than Lapua IMHO.
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Better than Lapua, now that is the first time I have ever heard this?

For general messin around Win or Rem. is just fine. Some folks think that Fed. brass is soft, so I seldom ever shoot federal brass
 
Never had Winchester brass last as long as Lapua for often-used cartridges, but they have made some pretty good 284 brass, 308 brass and 223 brass. WInchester has made some good brass, but I would not put Winchester in the same class as Lapua... no way.
 
I think the last couple of posters misinterpreted what Douglas was saying.

I take his statement as saying that Winchester is the best brass at it's price, even if you cull some.
Not that it is necessarily better made brass than Lapua.

It is also true that Winchester brass will contain high pressures very effectively.

Neither Norma nor Nosler brass even come close, Federal is a loss, IMHO.

Regards, Eagleye.
 
Thanks Eagleye, what I was saying was as you said, but also Win brass weighs 10 grs less than Lapua in the 308, hence it has greater powder capacity, hence better velocities. Never meant to say Win brass was better made than Lapua. But if you bought 500 win brass and 250 lapua brass and weighed and prepped the win brass including flash hole sizing etc. you would end up with 250 Win brass that would be every bit as good as the Lapua and have greater internal capacity, for about the same price give or take.
 
Add my $0.02 to the pot

I only neck size for my bolt guns so any brass lasts quite a while.
For semi auto centre fire I find that most of the brass (over 3/4) I stop loading due to split necks or stretch rings around the base (I don't run cases in a semi auto if the ring goes all the way around; save those for bolt gun plinking) are "WW-SUPER" (Winchester Western or whatnot).
Even with the o-ring trick I've had terrible case head stretching with WW-Super brass in 303 British but FC (Federal) are pretty bad as well.
The most durable "inexpensive" brass I find is "R-P" (Remington - Peters); though "WINCHESTER" stamped brass is quite good as well. I'd say around 3/4 of my loose primer pockets have been with Federal brass but that's not too many.

I don't load too hot. Most of my loads are hovering around the starting values as that seems to be where I get the best accuracy. I also do a lot of low pressure cast bullet loads. As a result I don't have much experience with which brand of brass handles high pressures the best.
 
In a recent batch of Winchester 7X57 brass I bought, almost half had oversized primer pockets. Too little perhaps on which to pass judgement, but I have stopped buying new Winchester brass as a result. With so many other consistently good brands, I see no reason to risk another poor batch.
 
nomad 68 said:
I'm new to the whole thing and currently attempting to build a good supply of brass.The winchester seems to have poor reviews on line.Is it to be avoided if possible?Thanks
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In my .308 it works fine. When I used ttsx federal gave me compressed loads but Winchester did not. It must have a larger capacity.
 
Last bag of winchester brass I bought (45-70) there were two cases with cracks from stem to stern, previous to that had a bag of 6.5x55 with a couple had flaws in the neck area. The brass otherwise was fine. I don't touch winchester brass anymore unless it's free. Other than poor quality control, I haven't noticed much difference between it and other brass, but I'm sure the hard core bench rest crowd would be able to notice a difference.
PRVI brass seems to be good but the necks are extremely hard and I've had to anneal them before reloading to prevent cracks.
 
Eagleye said:
It is also true that Winchester brass will contain high pressures very effectively.

Regards, Eagleye.
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c-fbmi said:
Thanks Eagleye, what I was saying was as you said, but also Win brass weighs 10 grs less than Lapua in the 308, hence it has greater powder capacity, hence better velocities.
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Most curious... that would also sugggest that if annealed properly the cases should not split too soon due to the hardness of the brass? I have had pretty good luck with WW brass, except for 300 WSM for some reason, it might just need to be annealed quite often compared to others... in my case anyway, it could be the chamber in the rifle causing necks to be overworked.
 
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