New brass for bottleneck cartridge?

M

Mikeyman

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Hi all so I have been reloading a long time but 95% has been with straight wall pistol and rifle cases. I am looking to buy new brass for a 30-06 primary use will be hunting out to a max distance of 400y. I am confused about what brand of brass to buy. At the low end you have federal/Winchester/Remington, then up a bit to hornady then way up to nosler/lapua/norma. My goal is to produce hunting rounds as close to MOA as possible. Are the expensive cases more for hard core target competitors? Can I achieve my modest accuracy goal with one of the three cheaper brands of cases? What is a realistic number of times I can re-use the cases. My 45-70 brass lasts forever so I haven't had a lot of experience in this area.

Thanks!
 
I load 243, 7mm-08 and 30-06.
Winchester brass for 243, hornady for 7mm-08 and winchester for one 30-06 remington for the other. It is not uncommon for me to get 10+ loads out of the brass. I have shot some pretty great groups with this "cheap" brass.
 
Gatehouse said:
Federal is usually soft but Win and Rem work fine
Click to expand...

I have heard this a number of times about the " softness " of Federal brass. I have reloaded a few hundred Federal brass in 25-06 all seemingly killing well and grouping well on paper. Please someone be a little more scientific about the softness of Federal Brass? thanks FS
 
Well to be honest it's been years since I reloaded Federal but in 7RM,300WM, 270, 3006 etc the primer pockets would get loose sooner than other brands. Sometimes after only two firings. That said, I'm sure Federal has more than one grade of brass as thier match brass seems to be sought after and I've also had decent case life from thier .223 brass.

They also may be using a different brass supplier or whatever these days compared to ten years ago.
 
Well you are in luck with the 30'06. Higginsons has Browning stamped 30'06 that is made by Norma for $18/50. I use it pretty much exclusively in 30'06, excellent brass.
 
As far as i am aware all brass is "soft" to a degree, it depends on the treatment and the actual alloys that are in the brass. All brass will become "work hardened", which means that everytime a piece is "worked" albeit by firing or by resizing it will stiffen. saying this if it is worked too many times it will become "brittle". This can be overcome by annealing the shoulder and case mouth. I have reloaded fed, LC, win, hornady, hornady match, RP, and lapua casings to name a few. As previously mentioned the only downfall usually is the primer pocket becoming loose, if this happens then it is time to retire the brass. Personally I have set aside 10 of each brand casing I have for .308 and put them through "stress" tests. I anneal 5 of the 10 per brand after every 3 firings the other 5 just get resized with no annealing. I might be loading light compared to others but my 42.5Gr of benchmark gives me the best results for tight groups. I will have to check my notes to guarantee my findings but as far as I can remember I was able to reload most cases without annealing upto 8-10 times, the annealed cases I was able to reload apwards of 18-20 times before any flaws or stresses were noticed on the brass.

I am not a Brass "snob", I have had great results from all the brass I have used, its just the life expectancy with or without annealing that makes them different.

My .02$

Fassteel said:
I have heard this a number of times about the " softness " of Federal brass. I have reloaded a few hundred Federal brass in 25-06 all seemingly killing well and grouping well on paper. Please someone be a little more scientific about the softness of Federal Brass? thanks FS
Click to expand...
 
Fassteel said:
I have heard this a number of times about the " softness " of Federal brass. I have reloaded a few hundred Federal brass in 25-06 all seemingly killing well and grouping well on paper. Please someone be a little more scientific about the softness of Federal Brass? thanks FS
Click to expand...


Federal brass in my 25/06 work hardens very quick. 2 reloads then it has to be annealed or they split at the neck. I've never put them under a microscope but they expand more at the head than my win brass. I get 5 loadings easy before I have to anneal with win brass in 25/06.
45/70 brass I use Winchester. Never trimmed and I have probably 20-25 loads on some cases but I'm not pushing hot loads anymore
 
I can say I can't shoot good enough to know if brass effects accuracy. I use Winchester brass because it seems to last and it's generaly cheaper and when compared to Remington brass (45/70) with equal loads I get less velocity so I assume less pressure as the cases my be bigger. Maybe there's another reason but they are lighter in weight
 
Tough to compare straight-walled cases to bottlenecks in terms of durability. I have .444 and 44-40 cases that have 20+ reloads and now I scrutinise them, I'm sure each one with be the last, but they hold up great. Bottlenecks, not so much. I was getting frustrated loading up heavy .303B loads because even good brass (prvi) was getting the crap kicked out of it. I started marrying brass to rifle and it helped considerably.
 
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