Weight sorting brass.... ??

[JCW]

I've never weight sorted brass. I load for hunting rifles and although I've heard of this practice, I've never really worried about it. I'm kind of meticulous about case length, but does the weight really make a noticeable difference?

Like Vikingsguy said, it can make a huge difference. I have seen it first hand about 25 years ago when dad made up some fairly warm reloads in Rem brass for me. Without knowing the consequences he used the same load/charge in Winchester brass. Luckily I was wearing eye protection as I got a face full of powder, very hard bolt lift, a primer that had blown out of the case, and a very pronounced ejector mark. I still have that piece of brass to remind me about dotting my I's and crossing my T's at the reloading bench. I use a cheap digital scale to do a quick check on all my brass just to verify they are all in the same ballpark. Same pressure issues can be said for temp sensitive powders and working up loads in winter then firing them in summer, I have never experienced this issue, but something to be aware of.

 

[N2TRKYS]

I don't weight sort brass, never noticed enough difference to make it worth my time. Weight sorting bullets, now that has proven to be a better use of my time.

 

[Laelkhunter]

Yes it’s normal. Brass does vary considerably from lot to lot. Use them both. Keep them separated.

It’s not from two different manufacturers. Both came from Norma unless I’ve missed something somewhere.

You are correct, OP stated "Nosler" in his post, and I think Norma makes Nosler brass.

 

[VikingsGuy]

You are correct, OP stated "Nosler" in his post, and I think Norma makes Nosler brass.

Something is off in this to have 20% variance. I have several Nosler mixed lot batches in .308 and 25-06 and out of curiosity I weighed a representative sample last night and saw intra-batch variation not much bigger than inter-batch variation - certainly nothing close to 20% and nothing that would concern me for safety or hunting purposes. Maybe OP got a bad run, or Nosler changed specs, or Nosler changed OEMs, who knows, but the seems like a big difference for same vendor.

 

[Laelkhunter]

Yea, it does seem peculiar that he has two different batches of once fired, but each of the two batches weigh the same, but 40 grains difference between the two. Maybe some other manufacturer made the two different batches, some time apart?

 

[BWALKER77]

Weight is a proxy for volume. >3% can cause velocity differences that show up more as range increases. Matters to to target guys and not hunters typically. My concern in this instance is the 20% variation. If that translated to a 20% increase in internal volume that would, I think, have pressure effects if one was loading near the top.

Buy Lapua and dont worry about it.

 

[BWALKER77]

You are correct, OP stated "Nosler" in his post, and I think Norma makes Nosler brass.

Norma, Federal, Silver State and god knows who else made brass for Nosler at one time.
I find it highly unlikely that brass from the same manufacturer will have a 20% weight difference.
Hornady brass IMO is better than Nosler and quit a bit cheaper. It's also tough as hell and last a long time. I use it exclusively in my prairie dog guns.

 

[ImBillT]

Weight is a proxy for volume. >3% can cause velocity differences that show up more as range increases. Matters to to target guys and not hunters typically. My concern in this instance is the 20% variation. If that translated to a 20% increase in internal volume that would, I think, have pressure effects if one was loading near the top.

It won’t have anywhere a 20% difference in internal volume. To compare the two, you would have to figure out how much of the actual chambers volume was actually brass instead of empty space, and then compare it to the other case, or of course, fire them, size them, and measure their actual internal volume. I would be tremendously surprised if a 20% difference in case weight amounted to more than a 5% difference in case volume, and if I was actually going to guess a value, I would guess 1%-2%.

There was more to the story on the guy blowing up the Winchester case with a load he had used in Remington. Today’s Winchester brass is quite hard, but the old white box W-W brass was pretty soft(SAMMI max pressures for most of the popular cartridges were lower than our newer cartridges too). The guy mention that the kid in the Remington brass was hot. I guarantee it was well in excess of SAMMI max pressure in the Remington brass, and there’s a good chance it wasn’t any higher in the Winchester brass. The Winchester brass most likely couldn’t handle the pressure the Remington did.


Today, Norma brass for most cartridges is softer than Winchester and Lapua. The Norma 6.5-284 that I’ve seen was quite hard though, and I suspect most of their brass for modern cartridges is fairly hard. That 6.5-284 brass wasn’t as uniform as the .308Win and .222Rem Norma brass that I’ve used. Norma and RWS are usually more uniform than Lapua, and are also both softer. The old W-W was quite uniform, and soft. Today’s harder Winchester is dismal in terms of uniformity(at least last time I bothered with it). If you haven’t noticed the trend, I suspect that harder brass formulations are difficult to manufacture as uniformly as softer ones. Nonetheless, Lapua is still VERY uniform, and while RWS isn’t as hard as Lapua, it’s still quite hard(harder than Federal, Norma, IMI, Lake City, and Hornady) it’s easily the most perfect brass in existence.

 

[ImBillT]

Buy Lapua and dont worry about it.

I’ mixed lots of Lapua when I annealed every .308 case I had, and came out with similar weight variation. Within a single lot, they are far better than any domestic brass, but Norma and RWS both have less weight variation than Lapua in my experience. I shoot Lapua in anything I intend to hotrod. It’s hard and will allow the highest pressure, although Winchester is par in hardness, you gotta buy an absolute boat load of it and do TONS of work to it to have an acceptable batch of brass when you’re done.

 

[ImBillT]

Norma, Federal, Silver State and god knows who else made brass for Nosler at one time.
I find it highly unlikely that brass from the same manufacturer will have a 20% weight difference.
Hornady brass IMO is better than Nosler and quit a bit cheaper. It's also tough as hell and last a long time. I use it exclusively in my prairie dog guns.

Find it highly unlikely all you want. I wish I had weights written down, but I’m fairly certain I had a near 50gr difference between batches of Lapua .308. All was LR primer pocket. I had combined around 500 pieces of match brass with very different reload counts on them. I annealed then, sized them, trimmed them, checked for impending case head separation, re-turned all the necks a few .0001” down, uniformed primer pocket depth .001” deeper and then sorted by weight. There were two very distinct groups with sub groups in between.

 

[N2TRKYS]

Lapua brass is only worth it, if you can get it on sale. I don't find enough difference in Lapua brass than any other manufacturer to justify the higher price.

 

[ImBillT]

Lapua brass is only worth it, if you can get it on sale. I don't find enough difference in Lapua brass than any other manufacturer to justify the higher price.

No one will ever convince me of this statement unless Lapua changes what they’ve been doing. They are the cheapest brass worth using if you do any work on your brass and reload it multiple times.


That said, I’m sure you can take Hornady brass outta the box, shoot 1MOA and kill deer all day long. Perfect brass won’t turn a 1MOA gun into a .25MOA gun, or even .5MOA, even .75MOA. But bad brass can make make a great gun look mediocre.

I eek everything I can out of my hunting guns, and in the end, most of them still just shoot like hunting guns. Still, I want them to shoot as good as they can.

 

[cahunter805]

This guy had the same problem with 7Mag brass as you did. Don’t overthink it. Sort it and keep separate. Use one batch and sell the other.

I'm Done With Nosler Brass!

I have used Nosler bras for some time in various calibers due to it consistency within lots and even when using other lots it was within a grain or two of other lots. But then I ran across a 44 grain difference between two different lots. I called Nosler support on this issue and they did not...

www.longrangehunting.com

 

[mtmuley]

Rabbit hole. mtmuley

 

[BuzzH]

I've mixed brass types with several rifles...I never did see a difference in how any one shot any better or worse than the other. Same POI with all of them.

I think this brass type and weight sorting is wayyyyy over-played.

 

[N2TRKYS]

No one will ever convince me of this statement unless Lapua changes what they’ve been doing. They are the cheapest brass worth using if you do any work on your brass and reload it multiple times.


That said, I’m sure you can take Hornady brass outta the box, shoot 1MOA and kill deer all day long. Perfect brass won’t turn a 1MOA gun into a .25MOA gun, or even .5MOA, even .75MOA. But bad brass can make make a great gun look mediocre.

I eek everything I can out of my hunting guns, and in the end, most of them still just shoot like hunting guns. Still, I want them to shoot as good as they can.

I reload multiple times in multiple different cartridges and have never seen any difference in accuracy based off of brass.
If Lapua is the cheapest at the time I’m buying brass, then I’ll get it. Otherwise, it’s overpriced and overhyped.