300 WSM brass problem.

Bananatole

Bananatole

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My friend has a 300 wsm. He is no where as anal about his stuff as I am. Leaves his action open while driving around, collecting dirt and what not.

He has about 150 brass pieces for his rifle. He left them by my tumbler cause he didnt know how to work it. So i tumble and then inspect them for him. Turns out 90% of the winchester brand brass, once fired, have long cuts in the neck. So after seeing these obvious faults i looked at the rest of his ammo. Mostly fusion brass, and they all have 4-5 little nicks right before the shoulder.


So heres the problem, we live together and he wants me to help reload some ammo for him. He just bought some dies and all the components for my press. I dont know if im comfortable using these nicked cases. The only thing i can think of is that the Winchester brass is garbage and the same nicks ended up as large holes in his Winchester brass. Id rather not do anything even if it borders on dangerous.

here is a pic of a winchester case that has been wrecked in his rifle.

photo-9_zps32d06fe8.jpg


I will get better pics of the wrecked ones and the ones he intends to reload. He is taking his rifle to a smith at the end of the month but im more concerned about the reloads since ill be basically doing it.
 
seems to be a winchester problem in factory brass , loaded near max or at max , with brass like that i would be tossing and getting some fresh brass , and maybe try a couple manufactures remington and federal brass
 
they were factory loads that did this. The fusions didnt do this but they have slight nicks right around where the base of the cuts start.

ill throw more pics up later.

ty
 
You hit the nail on the head. Winchester brass sucks. He could at least go to Norma but its pricey. I have to use Winchester in the 7WSM because nobody else makes that brass short of getting Norma 300wsm, necking down, turning necks, dealing with donuts...
In any event, while sorting brass, out of 550 cases I found a dozen or so brass that looked like that and tossed them.
 
Nosler Vortex 300 WSM are great brass, got 60 fired from my FNH Tactical ready for load devellopment... JP.
 
Apparently Winchester has had a bad run of brass. Schit like this has been reprted for some time now. Too bad, as Winchester usually makes great brass. Hopefully it's just a bad batch and not somehting that will be around for a long time.
 
I have had issues with winchester brass in 300 WSM as well, many many split necks on 1st load. I haven't had that issue with other chamberings though. There was a thread a while back where people were reporting issues with the 300 WSM Winchester brass but I had no luck digging it up for reference.
 
I have the same problem with 243 WSSM brass. I bought 1000 rounds of brass before the rifle was completed. Annealing new brass does not help. Loose about 10% on first firing. Any idea on when this brass was made?
 
I had noticed a large decline in quality of this years win 300wsm brass even the rem stuff would only get a couple firings . Even a significant weight difference between the stuff I bought when I first bought my 300 (2010) and the boxes I bought earlier last year.. I'm thinking they cut costs by thinning out the brass
 
Yet I have a lot of 300WSM Winchester brass, some of which has been loaded 5 times now.
I have yet to lose a case to splits, etc.
I even have some nickle plated Winchester cases which are Ok [I am not fond of nickle plated brass, BTW]
So it is obviously certain batches of brass that are showing the failures.
Eagleye.
 
300 WSM brass failures is not good news. Currently working on 6.5 and .257 caliber cartridges based on 300 WSM. I am seeing slight folds in quite a few shoulders even after annealing.
 
I never had any problems with my Winchester brass like eagle I'm going on 4-5 reloads on it. Must be a batch thing. And I'm near the top end when stuffing powder in it .5gr short of max.
Cheers
Geoff
 
kk glad to hear it sounds more like a winchester specific problem. i will inspect the cases and load.

i think he shot them about a year and a half ago.
 
Had the exact same problem with Winchester Power Max Bonded 180gr. Brass fired through a couple Sako 300WSM. Approx. 10 to 15 boxes (20rds ea.), 1/3 to 1/2 box of rounds would split at neck, and I had about three to four different lot numbers. At first I thought it might be the rifle, but I have two that are only one serial number apart and the brass was splitting at the neck in both rifles. Contacted Winchester distribution point in Peterborough ON. They gave me a purolator shipping number and took all much of my brass, and unspent rounds. They then shipped me a large box of ammo replacing what I shipped. The new ammo no longer splits at neck, it seems stiffer; however a few rounds are tight when loading. Winchester was aware of this problem with their brass as I did a net check and found others with same problem. In all I was very pleased that Winchesters customer service was nice enough to replace my rounds and some spent brass. In all, I think they have resolved this problem, but there likely remains some lot numbers out there that will need to be taken off shelf or returned to their company to completely put an end to this issue.
 
Glad to hear Winchester is on top of things. It seems that a bad batch or two slipped out of the factory, good thing it's not normal for them and that they are willing to please the customers.

Between myself and a hunting buddy that uses 300 WSM we have quite a few bad brass casings, but I don't think we are going to send them in. Just toss em and get more brass, winchester brass that is.
 
I'm glad to hear that as well, I was getting lots of split cases on my factory Winchester 300WSM cartridges. I've still got a couple boxes of older stuff, i should get it fired off and see if Winchester goes good for any bad cases.
 
Winchester/Olin lost the bid to produce ammunition at our American Lake City Army ammunition plant in 2001 and afterward sold off its brass production facilities during a restructuring after loosing this lucrative government contract. The world we grew up in with Remington/DuPont and Winchester/Olin is long dead as these companies are bought up by Wall Street holding company's that's only concerns are profit margins.

The Remington and Winchester powders that we knew in the past now belong to a company that only made aircraft in the 1970s. General Dynamics Weapons Division now owns the powder production of these old names.

At accurateshooter.com many people praise Winchester cartridge cases and use them instead of using the more expensive Lapua brass in competition. At this same website they say Remington brass is junk, so opinions seem to be flip flopping when it comes to brass.
 
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