F****ing Hornady brass!

noslerpartition

Handloader
May 26, 2018
995
354
I want to load some 300 winwag for a friend.
200 Hornady cases and with about 50 I am.not able to sent Federal primers with the RCBS hand-primer.
My knuckles burn, but no way. Some were easy, some ok, quite a few needed lots of power. And yet, some were beyond what I could do.
Will look for the set for the press tomorrow and hope they will fit with the primer sticking out some

Gesendet von meinem HUAWEI VNS-L31 mit Tapatalk
 
I’d look into a primer pocket uniformer of some kind


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I have one.
But I expected that I could set them.
Thought wrong.
Either I can set them.with the press, or I have to remove them and work on the pockets.
Makes one wonder why I have to do their job

Gesendet von meinem HUAWEI VNS-L31 mit Tapatalk
 
Bear is right, only way to go, unfortunately. Today's bagged brass from most American manufacture's is ridiculous really. So don't be too hard on just Hornady. No way factory ammo brass is held to the same lax standards, or they'd all shoot like throwing lawn darts.

I got a 100 ct bag of Winchester in 22-250 a while back and was so disgusted just by looking at them that I considered selling them and trying again, but I couldn't in good conscience hand them off to somebody the way Winchester sent them out the door. No way I could've primed some of them.

I prepped around 20 of them, then started saving what I was getting in a tubberware dish. Out of roughly 80 pieces of brass I got 26 grains worth of brass just out of the primer pockets and flash hole deburring. Think about that.....a sand like pile of brass weighing 26 gr's from 80 primer pockets!!

They were awful. Inside of the flash holes looked more inviting as a bat cave than promoting good ignition. Varying lengths, and varying shoulder measurements. Once prepped and fire formed they made for good shooting brass, but holy cow, modern equipment and that's what goes out the door? I'd be fully embarrassed.
 
For what it's worth, in non premium American brass, I've had the least amount of any type of correction needed with Remington brass, but that was possibly just a particular lot. Can't say that definitively across the board.

The most impressive non premium brass I've run across period, was a bag of PPU in 8x57. Came annealed, even lengths, and very little primer pocket correction needed, and at a good price.
 
Other than an off center primer pocket or two I haven’t had any issues with Hornady brass. But I don’t need the results to which the bench and long distance shooters strive for my needs.
If I did, I might think differently.
Never had a problem seating a primer with Hornady so I’ve be lucky so far.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I'm not impressed with the Hornady 280 brass I have either. The weight variation was +/- 15g over the bag of 50 cases
Tight primer pockets are a good thing, and these are pretty tight. Just didn't care for the weight variance, for the price. Wished I would've just bought some Norma to begin with.
 
Tight primer pockets are one thing, but I know what NP is talking about. Ran into it myself. You could've went ahead and seated the primer if you wanted to buckle the sidewalls of the primer first.

That Win brass length varied from right on MAX, to .018 less than that. It was all over the place. Even worse as far as safety and performance was the varying case head to shoulder measurements. I've no clue how that could be in the same bag of brass. Maybe I got the stuff that was swept off the floor.
 
I have used a number of different Hornady Rifle brass cartridges. I have not had troubles with them. I do get a higher FPS with them and the lowest FPS with Nosler brass. Same exact load and they also print to different places on the target. Both shoot small groups but not just together.
 
Wow. I'm shooting 3" - 4" groups at 600 yards with Hornady brass... 6mm Creedmoor. And the Hornady bullet.

Handloading the stuff was easy-peasy as well. My opinion of Hornady has come up, way up, over the past couple of years.

Regards, Guy
 
My last two experiences with Hndy brass was for 6.5 Grendel and 6.5 PRC. The pockets were pretty uniform out the box. There was some minuscule weight variance and a little bit of trim length variation, but after sized, trimmed and 1X fired, they are now producing very accurate rounds. In the case of the PRC they are sub-half MOA with more room for improvement with a little more development. The grendel brass has 4 loadings and the PRC has 3, so I can't say much about the lifespan of the brass. 4 or 5 years ago I got some for a 280 Rem and it was pretty bad. That "hit-miss" issue is something really they should address.
 
I read elsewhere that bulk brass you buy in bags from various manufacturers does not get the last inspection that brass used in making factory ammo does. I guess you could say it's good enough for reloaders to use but not good enough for out factory made ammo. I've been working with the brass I have on hand more out of boredom than anything else but some of the brass is Winchester and some Remington. The Remingtons needed less trimming right out of the bag while the trimmer removed metal by a noticeable amount. Trimming was done to insure all brass was the same length and to square the necks. On uniforming the flash holes, both seemed just about equal on burrs but Winchester burrs were harder to cut. Uniforming primer pockets was as far as I could judge about equal. Cartridges done on a large scale (more than 200) were .270 Win. 7x57 Mauser and 30-06. Working on the .308 Win. right now.
Paul B.
 
I've been using both Hornady and Norma brass in my .220 Swift. Can't say there is much difference. Both load easily and have survived several reloads and the Swift isn't easy on brass in max loads. I use Hornady and Lapua in my .222 with the results being the same.

I recently pulled the bullets on three boxes of Winchester .270 factory ammunition for the nickle plated cases. Most of them would not fit in my RCBS shell holder because the rim dimensions were off. A few of them that wouldn't fit the RCBS would work in a Hornady holder but not all. I think all manufacturers of "are we calling them less than premium" brass have quality control issues from time to time.

Of course I've had no trouble at all from Nosler, Norma, and Lapua. I guess you get what you pay for.
 
I just got 100 pieces of new Hornady 300 H&H. It looks good on a quick initial peek at primer pockets & flash holes, but haven't checked thickness yet.

Some just fired Sellior & Bellot 6.5 Crudmore brass I checked is wonderfully uniform thickness wise, but the primer pockets are too small for all but RP 9 1/2s to be seated without crushing the primer cup. The RPs are bottomed but stand about .030" proud of the case. Not really feeling like redoing 100 urped primer pockets so tried some Hornady brass. It's also less than stupendous. Primers seat OK, but many flash holes are off center, not round, & of varying sizes. My flash hole DBT will fit some, but for others I had to use a PPC size tool. Considering drilling the small ones to match the large ones, but why is this necessary with new brass? Body & neck thickness variation is rather poor too with some necks measuring .007" difference. All this for a tad less than a 6.5x55 clone? Pffffft.

I've been away from all this fun you guys are having since about 1995 & this is the 1st new brass I've bought since getting back into the hobby. Hornady was just getting into a few of the common calibers way back when & I wasn't impressed then either. Their Swift brass was abysmal in the lot I tried.

So far I'm unimpressed with either factory QC or the $$ signs in management's eyes. At the prices we're paying with technology advances in the last 30 years, new brass should be a whole lot better than it is. How can the Norma & Lapua of 30 years ago make nicer product?

Maybe the Privi Partisan 7x57 will be worthwhile. At least it's cheap. Nobody else makes 7x57 anymore?

Sorry for the rant, but not really.
 
Any time I have a problem w/ a product I call them and demand a refund including original and return shipping. If I don't get the results I want, I file a complaint w/ my state AG's office. It works.
It's the only way to solve issues like these ! Take action my friends (y)
 
Result of setting them.

5 simply did not work. I removed the primers and reworked the pockets. 2 were slit for OAL meassuring....
BTW: S&B work best with their own primers. They seem to have a smaller primer pocket.

I stopped loading them for anyone!

0b4f59681b7396be0a97f58d17622e13.jpg
 
I've had some hornady 6.5 CM brass that had alot of primer pocket issues before. For what it cost I have to say I've had great luck with the PPU brass in my European calibers. I use PPU with the 7x57 and one of my 9.3x62. The other 9.3x62 I use norma brass. My 6.5 CM only gets Peterson small primer brass. My 30/06 still uses hornady brass, some of them the rim was jagged and would not even fit in the shell holder. That's the only problems I've had with hornady, which is a small amount because I've used a bunch in the past with no issues.

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk
 
I found nosler brass to be the same when seating federal 215 primers. Had to extensively use the primer pocket tool to get the primers to seat using a press. Not all pieces required the primer pocket tool but enough did to just use the tool on all pieces.
 
Does anybody know if the boxed Hornady brass is different from the bagged Hornady brass?

I just got some 35 Whelen brass (in a box rather than a bag) & it looks pretty decent at 1st glance (some quick measurements for wall thickness & weight of a few at random). The boxed stuff seems to cost a little more too. Also got some PPU 7x57 & 22-250 that also looks pretty good so far.
 
358 WCF":1njk8m26 said:
Does anybody know if the boxed Hornady brass is different from the bagged Hornady brass?

I just got some 35 Whelen brass (in a box rather than a bag) & it looks pretty decent at 1st glance (some quick measurements for wall thickness & weight of a few at random). The boxed stuff seems to cost a little more too. Also got some PPU 7x57 & 22-250 that also looks pretty good so far.

I can't answer that but I will say the only new Hornady brass I've bought was the box style of 50 for 250 savage. Somewhat pricy but a LGS had it, and I needed it before hunting season. Wasn't bad at all as far as prep work.
 
Back
Top