Reloaders - Question on brass for newbie

[vtsnowedin]

Yes you should start low and work up for safety but if you do not sort your brass you will have a hard time deciding what low is. Just sticking to the low or mid load if you are mixing brass will give you very large group sizes.
The name of the game is
"THE SAME"
You want a lot of the SAME brass that has been fired the SAME number of times, all sized the SAME way, and trimmed to the exact SAME length and chamfered with the SAME tool, Then you need to reprime them with the SAME primers seated with the SAME pressure and charged with the exact SAME amount of powder where you move the charge handle the SAME way each round, then seat the SAME bullets to the SAME depth and crimp them all (or not) the SAME way to the SAME pressure taking care that they are all seated perfectly in line with the bore using the SAME technique to prevent misalignment.
Low speed load, middle speed load, or max load if you want ammo you can count on "THE NAME OF THE GAME IS THE SAME.
Note: All of the above is totally ripped off from something I read in a gun publication long ago. My apologies to the original author.

 

[Soundguy]

and most of that makes a significant.. or at least noticable difference EXCEPT the brass.

as fro 'hard time decideing what LOW is LOW' that's BS double talk.

low is the starting charge listed. low is low.

any time you change a variable you havn't tried before, and thus don't have a baseline for.. you should start over low.

Yes you should start low and work up for safety but if you do not sort your brass you will have a hard time deciding what low is. Just sticking to the low or mid load if you are mixing brass will give you very large group sizes.
The name of the game is
"THE SAME"
You want a lot of the SAME brass that has been fired the SAME number of times, all sized the SAME way, and trimmed to the exact SAME length and chamfered with the SAME tool, Then you need to reprime them with the SAME primers seated with the SAME pressure and charged with the exact SAME amount of powder where you move the charge handle the SAME way each round, then seat the SAME bullets to the SAME depth and crimp them all (or not) the SAME way to the SAME pressure taking care that they are all seated perfectly in line with the bore using the SAME technique to prevent misalignment.
Low speed load, middle speed load, or max load if you want ammo you can count on "THE NAME OF THE GAME IS THE SAME.
Note: All of the above is totally ripped off from something I read in a gun publication long ago. My apologies to the original author.

 

[vtsnowedin]

and most of that makes a significant.. or at least noticable difference EXCEPT the brass.

as fro 'hard time decideing what LOW is LOW' that's BS double talk.

low is the starting charge listed. low is low.

any time you change a variable you havn't tried before, and thus don't have a baseline for.. you should start over low.

I'm not trying to get in your face or pick a fight with you, but , As Phil Robertson from Duck Dynasty would say "However"
If you’re just using the stating load yes of course they are all safe but the difference in case capacity will have just as much effect in velocity round per round on the low end as it will on the high end and velocity variation will increase the vertical point of impact at the target. A two grain difference in a 308 will make about 100 feet per second difference in muzzle velocity and that will spread bullets 0.3 inches vertically on top of all the other aiming errors that are in play. That difference is there at 2700 to 2600 as well as it is between 2400 and 2500fps.
Sort your brass if you care about the results and that is no BS.

 

[Soundguy]

2gr difference ? or 2gr of case space difference in a case that is not full means just a very small meaningfull pressure difference. it's not like you are compairing a 46.5 to a 48.5 gr charge of 4064 setting under a 150gr flat bottomed spire point.

I reload for accuracy.

some reload for max charge/pressure without detonating their gun..... some relaod for max velocity.

Rarely have I seen a max charge or highest velocity load be the most accurate.

just saying what I have observed.

( 30-06. WLRP, imr powder for instance... )

 

[thatguy]

I read the above about "low is low" - it took me a couple or tries but I finally understand what both of you are saying.. As a newbie i want to try to eliminate as many variable as possible so i get consistent loads - so I am looking for brass of similar weights so I dont have to vary the charge per brass type. I am also more interested in accuracy than velocity.

============

I bought an older Lyman D-7 balance scale off ebay and it arrived yesterday, so I was able to weigh some brass this morning..

I had 3 different types that I weighed a) LC Nato, b) Hornady Match 308 (1x fired), and c) Federal 308 (1x fired) - This was very unscientific but interesting..

The LC brass averaged 179.0 grains (i only weight a few of these because i have no idea how many times its been reloaded and i dont want to sort it by year to try and find 'like' weigh brass)

The Hornady brass averaged 171.5 (high of 172.9 with a low of 171.0 - Spread of 1.9 grains)

The Federal brass averaged 181.4 (high of 182.8 with a low of 179.0 - 3.8 grains)

I was surprised that the Federal 308 was heavier than the Lake City military..

It would appear to me that by using the Hornady brass I would have better repeatable results due to the lower weight differences.

Is the Hornady spread of 1.9 grains "significant" enough that I would need to sort the hornady into sub weight groups?

Thanks

Brian

 

[Gunny]

I think you're reading too much into it. Never go below minimum load data and as long as you don't approach max load data, load away. It would be a pain to have to work up specific loads for each brand of brass, even more so if you start sorting brands into weight categories, not to mention all the rounds you've have to fire to work up a good load for each category, plus the record keeping would drive you nuts.

 

[vtsnowedin]

Is the Hornady spread of 1.9 grains "significant" enough that I would need to sort the hornady into sub weight groups?


Brian

No it would take a lot more then that to change point of impact. One very useful tool you could pick up is a crony chronograph. They are about $100 and can tell you a lot about the ammo you have assembled. It even keeps track of highest and lowest shot in a string and computes standard deviation for the string. A very boring piece of math if you needed to do it by hand. I'm not that into the math but I like to check my loads against what the manual called for. There are some interesting departures for some rounds especially new ones that are being promoted.

 

[Soundguy]

I think you're reading too much into it. Never go below minimum load data and as long as you don't approach max load data, load away. It would be a pain to have to work up specific loads for each brand of brass, even more so if you start sorting brands into weight categories, not to mention all the rounds you've have to fire to work up a good load for each category, plus the record keeping would drive you nuts.

i agree.. plenty more variables that will significantly influence shooting past the brass.

i sort my brass by # of loadings if possible.. and i usually keep some brass with some guns.. ie bolt guns. so i can simply neck size them and make them last longer.

for autoloaders.. it's always a fl resize.. and usually mixed brass for large batches I have sorted by # of fireings.