Rumor has it that Winchester brass is made by Privi. I have no idea if the rumor is true or not. I do know that my experience with Privi brass has been all good, other than that they have a tendency to have varying thicknesses on extractor flanges and grooves.
I gave up using Winchester brass 10 years ago and now rely on Remington and Nosler or Norma, if I can get it. The old Winchester brass in the yellow boxes is excellent though, if you can find it.
I look at it this way, if the brass doesn't have a blue hue around the shoulder and neck areas, it isn't annealed. I sincerely doubt any manufacturer is going to anneal pristine brass, unless they are being paid to do so, like the military does. They also aren't going to go to the expense and trouble to polish off the colors.
Unless you are into some very precise bench rest shooting, neck tension really doesn't make that much difference.
My last Hunter Bench Rest rifle had a special neck diameter. I had to have a reamer made up to get this. This is not an unusual practice by the way.
My concern was the thinness of the necks after turning them to give me .002 in of overall clearance in the neck area of the chamber after a bullet was inserted into the case. In all honesty, I wanted more tension, to slightly increase pressures as the bullet left the case. In HBR rifles, the bullet is seated far enough out so that the bullet is tight in the leade when the bolt is closed. It actually pushes the bullet back a few thou. The tight chamber helps to keep things aligned as well as possible as the neck is the only part of the case to be sized.
I measured a dozen different lots of Remington and Norma necks, after sizing and loading to get the dimensions I wanted for my reamer. I sent the case I was most enamored with to Premier in the US and asked them to make up a reamer for me. It is basically a Palma Match reamer with a slightly different neck diameter. Not a big deal for those guys.
Now, the cases I finally settled on were Norma. They were the most consistent from batch to batch with only around .002 in difference in outside diameter, after the .3085 diameter match grade bullets from Randy Robinette were loaded.
I put close to 3000 rounds down that rifle before it started to open up the groups. Not bad for a 308 Palma Match barrel, made by Hart.
Now, you want to know why I went to such length to get to the punch lines.
I bought one each 50 round blue box of match Norma brass from Paul Reiben in Kamloops. I was careful to rotate them all in order so I wouldn't get any surprises. The only thing I did to the cases was occasionally trim them all to length. Also, every 8 reloads, I annealed the necks.
When I finally rebarreled that rifle, I still had all fifty brass.
Bench rest shooters commonly load their rounds to 65,000 cups. Way over max listings. Because the tolerances are so tight, they get away with it.
That is one of the desirabilities of neck resizing only. Very little movement in the chamber.
I tried those cases out in my new barrel, a Shilen Match grade. They fit fine and shot well.
Because I had reloaded them so often, I decided a new barrel deserved new brass. I was in a bit of a rush so I settled for less desirable brass, Winchester. This was a pain in the butt because it all needed to have the necks turned to the desired diameter to conform to the chamber dimensions. Fine, the brass was soft and easily done on a lathe to look lovely. After about three loadings, I started to get split necks. I just annealed the remaining cases after I finished the batch and reloaded them all again. Every single batch that went through the rotation lost a couple of cases due to split necks. Some after the first shot after annealing. I said the hell with this and ordered some Norma from Paul. When those arrived, I threw the Winchester brass away. At the next gun show, I sold every piece of Winchester brass I had that came in bags or white boxes.
