Questions on Weighing Brass

[257 Ackley]

I had a career with the Air Force as a Toolmaker and in Optical Tooling alignment and calibration. So to say I am OCD about perfection in my handloading is putting it mildly. Sometimes I feel like an old wizard hunched over the bench in the night, poring over methods to shave another few thousandth's off the group. That is why I have broken some operations down into extra steps.

A gal I date could not believe the hours spent every week getting ready for matches. When she watched me weigh powder from an RCBS Chargemaster and than take it to an AND scale that measures to the hundredth of a grain, she started to get the picture. I'm not as bad as some of the guys that are engineers I shoot with.

The nice thing about brass is, once you have it prepped properly, the main PITA work is done. I anneal after every firing to keep brass malleable for neck tension and case life. The brass will last a long time if you do that on a regular basis.

 

[Oldtrader3]

If you are weighing new brass and it is Nosler, Norma or Lapua brass, from the same lot, save your time. The brass won't vary enough to affect group size, unless you are shooting Best Rest Competition.

 

[Darkhorse]

The nice thing about brass is, once you have it prepped properly, the main PITA work is done. I anneal after every firing to keep brass malleable for neck tension and case life. The brass will last a long time if you do that on a regular basis.

Very well put. And that is the reason I keep it separated by weight for the life of the case. Once done. It's done. And I can see no good reason not to put in a little extra time to begin with.

OT, I have never tried Nosler or Lapua I have just bought 100 or so lots of WW and worked with that.
But I have been looking seriously at both Nosler and Lapua and plan on buying some for my .308 Win. to start with. Then the .300 Win. Mag. as I am culling the old cases pretty quick.

 

[Oldtrader3]

Nosler and Norma have been to this point in time, the same. That may not be so in the future.

 

[ColColt]

The problem with weight brass is once yo do that and bring the brass home to dump in the tumbler, all is lost. Maybe I'm doing something wrong there. I dump it all in a Lyman 1200 tumbler with corn cob media.

 

[Darkhorse]

I no longer tumble. There. I've said it.
I clean what I want cleaned with polish and don't bother with the rest.
Easy to keep sorted this way.

 

[Oldtrader3]

I don't tumble either. In some rifles, I use nickel flash plated cases. I also don't know how you can tumble a bunch of cases and tell how many times they have been fired?

 

[257 Ackley]

It depends on how well you want to document the number of times brass has been fired and keeping them separate. My match brass is annealed after each firing, shoulder bumped .001 while depriming, tumbled, and than placed back in the plastic bin it came from. There is a piece of paper in each bin that has a running total of the # of firings on that brass that gets updated each time it is used. Each bin has the weight of the brass stored (.3 variance). Most of it comes down to how serious you want to be about taking care of your brass.

My hunting brass doesn't get this much TLC, but the expectation of results are not as high. The varmint caliber brass that is Lapua (.223, 22BR and 6BRX) is not weight sorted, but does go through similar treatment as match brass. :roll:

 

[ColColt]

I also don't know how you can tumble a bunch of cases and tell how many times they have been fired?

I usually load a certain amount, depending on caliber, maybe 20-30 cases to load and take to the range. I have a white sticky on each box the times I've fired/annealed each batch as well as pertinent info like the powder charge/bullet used. I you have two(or three) rifles with the same caliber I keep those separate as well marking the ammo boxes which rifle it's for.

I'll only tumble 20-30 cases at a time so I'll know which is which. I wont dump in cases from two separate rifles as usually they've been fired different times as well as annealed.

 

[Sas874runner]

I have been doing something quite... unorthodox when it comes to annealing but have had very good results with it. It's all based off of feel. When I size a case and pull it over the expander ball the feel of the amount of pressure needed to size the case and expand the neck over the ball. cases that do not size smooth and with ease are set aside for annealing. I will typically shoot one round of factory ammo ( normally Remington core lokt due to price) or a new unfired case to use as a comparison. Since doing that I have had groups decrease as well as standard deviation.I'm not saying it's the best way or even the right way but I have found that during load work up cases that were charged towards the low end will not need to be annealed as soon. All of the advice on this topic is sound advice. Pick what works best for you and gives you the best consistency and stick with it. The great thing about hand loading is that there are lots of ways to do it and yield good results within reason of course.