Militery brass consistency

Muir

Well-Known Member
I had a day off yesterday during which i waited for a plumber to come and give me an estimate for some work i need done. While sitting there I thought I'd sort some Lake City military brass -weeding out the scarred and badly dinged cases- to use in my new Ruger Precision Rifle. Digging around in the brass bins i found a sealed 2 gallon bucket with once fired, deprimed and polished Lake City brass from three different production years. Nice stuff! So shiny it hurt my eyes! I was struck by an idea. I went into the reloading Lab and brought out a digital scale and proceeded to weigh all the cases, setting each different weight into a separate plastic bin. I weighed all two gallons of brass. Normally I never weigh cases but I had time to kill. The results were startling.

Over the entire span, and discounting 2 cases that were outliers, I had just a 4 grain spread. If you can assume that they all started out with equal external dimensions, that would mean that the internal case capacity adjustment would equal just .3 grains of powder between cases at opposite ends of the weight spectrum. That's not too bad. Probably why I have gotten such fine accuracy using these cases over the years without worrying about the actual capacity of a case and just sorting by headstamp year of production.

The plumber never showed but I got 200+ cases of 'identical' weight to load in my RPR, with bags full of other weighed cases waiting. Stupid way to spend a morning but interesting use of it.~Muir

PS: Did I really spell 'military' with an e instead of an a?? Knot enuff coffey
 
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I think your new rifle deserves a little pendency - immense load work-up satisfaction heading your way, brother :thumb:
 
I had a day off yesterday during which i waited for a plumber to come and give me an estimate for some work i need done. While sitting there I thought I'd sort some Lake City military brass -weeding out the scarred and badly dinged cases- to use in my new Ruger Precision Rifle. Digging around in the brass bins i found a sealed 2 gallon bucket with once fired, deprimed and polished Lake City brass from three different production years. Nice stuff! So shiny it hurt my eyes! I was struck by an idea. I went into the reloading Lab and brought out a digital scale and proceeded to weigh all the cases, setting each different weight into a separate plastic bin. I weighed all two gallons of brass. Normally I never weigh cases but I had time to kill. The results were startling.

Over the entire span, and discounting 2 cases that were outliers, I had just a 4 grain spread. If you can assume that they all started out with equal external dimensions, that would mean that the internal case capacity adjustment would equal just .3 grains of powder between cases at opposite ends of the weight spectrum. That's not too bad. Probably why I have gotten such fine accuracy using these cases over the years without worrying about the actual capacity of a case and just sorting by headstamp year of production.

The plumber never showed but I got 200+ cases of 'identical' weight to load in my RPR, with bags full of other weighed cases waiting. Stupid way to spend a morning but interesting use of it.~Muir

PS: Did I really spell 'military' with an e instead of an a?? Knot enuff coffey

Yup,you did. But we will let you off but only because your posts are normally interesting and informative. Not your fault that yanks can't spell.
 
True military rifle ammunition (not rubbish HXP for example) has always been well made to the nth degree of quality. The reason is overhead fire where machine guns would be fired over the heads of one's own infantry. The last thing wanted is ammunition of inconsistent velocity that then risks hitting one's own troops.

Compare South African PMP .303, true military ammunition with rubbish HXP .303 made for purely cadet use on targets. Like chalk and cheese. PMP was superb. HXP was just adequate. PMP would shoot 1"at 100yards whereas in the same rifle HXP would shoot 2"or 3".

I am not at all surprised that Lake City was good. Wasn't this the stuff, in 30-06, the headstamp that US Army and USMC snipers and sharpshooters favoured over all other headstamps?
 
Yup,you did. But we will let you off but only because your posts are normally interesting and informative. Not your fault that yanks can't spell.
:tiphat:You're too kind.
My family's from Scotland so I always just figured it was...you know... genetic.~Muir
 
The cadets will be using our range this week and they usually leave a couple of hundred ex military 5.56 cases in the scrap bin. I mentioned this to my friend on Friday evening and he said he was going to beat the old skipdiver meaning me to it this time as he usually gets to the range first. I think I will pop in and empty the bins on Wednesday evening and beat him to it. :D

In reality we normally share the RG cases and batch them according to date on headstamp. Never bothered weighing them though as it doesn't warrant it for the limited ranges that we shoot at (maximum of 250-300). A bit of cleaning and prepping including removing the primer crimp and away we go. I use them in my .223 and my friend converts them to .17 fireball. He finds that some batches more readily convert than others.

He's going to be a bit miffed when he arrives at the range to find the bins have already been emptied. :evil:
 
The cadets will be using our range this week and they usually leave a couple of hundred ex military 5.56 cases in the scrap bin. I mentioned this to my friend on Friday evening and he said he was going to beat the old skipdiver meaning me to it this time as he usually gets to the range first. I think I will pop in and empty the bins on Wednesday evening and beat him to it. :D

In reality we normally share the RG cases and batch them according to date on headstamp. Never bothered weighing them though as it doesn't warrant it for the limited ranges that we shoot at (maximum of 250-300). A bit of cleaning and prepping including removing the primer crimp and away we go. I use them in my .223 and my friend converts them to .17 fireball. He finds that some batches more readily convert than others.

He's going to be a bit miffed when he arrives at the range to find the bins have already been emptied. :evil:

The Bureau of Indian Affairs used our club range for free because on their "qualification" day they will leave 20+ pounds of .223 brass of the same LOT, as well as heaps of 9mm and 40 cal pistol casings. It was a good arrangement until one of those greedy b@stards took up reloading! Now they police their brass. And so now get a bill for Range Use as well!

I don't normally sort brass except for year of manufacture and I never weigh brass. This was just out of curiosity.~Muir
 
I still have various lots of Lake City Match 7.62x51mm and .30 US (.30-06) both with 173-gr boattail bullets. Whenever I get a new .308 or .30-06, I run about five of these through it to see what its potential is.

I am still shooting .303 from WWII which is also very accurate out of my No.4 sniper rifle.

And I have shot several lots of Turk and German ammunition which was sub MOA with the open sights of several rifles. As I wrote hear before, I pulled the bullets from the corrosive ammunition, and the powder loads were identical to 1/10 of a grain. The machinegun ammunition needs to be accurate, because it was not just sprayed, but fired at long range from pits, using a turret tripod and periscope, for volley fire ambushes.
 
I resurrected this thread because I finally got to chronograph a few rounds of my loads on this Lake City brass. I didn't bring the ballistic computer for my chronograph so I only shot 10 rounds at 15 ft. I usually shoot 20 but hand writing took time in fading light. The rifle was my 20" Ruger Precision rifle.

It was remarkable that my load of IMR 4064 which is a grain off of MAX (and my standard 165/168 grain load) delivered 2770 fps average. This is about 40 fps over what Hodgdon lists for this bullet at MAX. The first thing that comes to mind is that the LC is thick brass. The other thing is that it illustrates the nature of reloading data; it is simply a guide, not gospel. My extreme spread was 30 fps and the Standard Deviation was 12.3 fps. This is pretty darned good.

The cases were Small Base, Full length resized. They were trimmed, the pockets swaged, the pocket depth uniformed, and the burrs from punching the flash hole removed -which uniforms the flash hole at the same time. Bullets were seated to specified OAL and crimped. At 100 yards off of a bipod I fired a 5/8" group with 4 of the 5 in about a single hole. At 150 yards (I'm guessing) I put 5 into an inch on a steel plate, and at 411yds I put five into 3.75 inches -this in a 14 mph cross wind. In other words, it's an accurate load. I think this illustrates the value of well prepped, consistent brass.~Muir
 
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