Culling cases

DCG

Well-Known Member
This is a question for the more target orientated of you.
Out of interest, I recently weighed a batch of ammunition that I had loaded (7mm-08 in Norma brass) and found a considerable variation in the weights of the assembled rounds, approximately 1.4 grains lowest to highest weights, so I pulled a few heads to check the powder (doubting myself), but found that the powder was the only consistent component in the whole assembly. I've never felt it necessary to select brass by weight in the past (or case volume or neck turning for that matter) but this has got me thinking.
My question is, do you select brass before or after you have performed other prepping operations, or in other words, in what order do you perform your selection and prepping operations?
 
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DCG, if you are shooting bench rest, yes you would batch your cases on weight after final case prep, trimming etc. However for hunting and less precise target shooting, there is no reason to do it. You will find that most of the weight difference is variaton is due to the brass and a little due to the projectiles. A range of 1.4 grains is pretty good in my opinion.
 
Dalula,
For hunting purposes probably not a lot, but i'm no expert, my thinking was the heavier the case the thicker the wall the greater the pressure, hence the question. However I did find that .2 or.3 of a grain differance in the weight of the heads caused a point of impact shift by up to an inch at 100 yards, so worth the effort when trying to improve accuracy.
DG
 
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Mountainstalker
Yes your absolutely correct about the weights, I guess I just wasnt expecting that variation in the cases especially with Norma brass, but thought I might batch a few rounds up to see what variation it caused on paper.
DG
 
Mountainstalker
Yes your absolutely correct about the weights, I guess I just wasnt expecting that variation in the cases especially with Norma brass, but thought I might batch a few rounds up to see what variation it caused on paper.
DG

It's enough to make a grown reloader scream.

How would you know that any variation was caused by the 1.4 grain difference? I mean really! The combined weight variation between case, powder, and bullet, assembled, was inside a 1.4 grain spread?? By Gosh! Sometimes I think bored reloaders should have their scales locked away until it's time to do actual reloading. They spend far too much time fretting over "weight spreads"!! :rolleyes: ( :D )~Muir
 
I've reloaded 90% of my ammo over the last severn years and I have to admit that I now do the least amount of work on each batch that I can safely get away with. I just do the basic stuff and no more. I don't get clover leaf groups but I think (know) thats down to me and not the gun. I reckon that barrel harmonics or call it what you will have a greater influence on accuracy than brass/bullet weight variations so if I were you I'd spend your time on finding a sweet shooting round that suits your gun.

regards
 
+1 mountainstalker, after you have trimmed etc. I use nosler custom which seems pretty good and is already weight sorted and prepped, however i did notice large differences in case length up to 10 thou. Im slowly but surely trimming all of my cases to the same length. Not sure if theres much appreciable difference in accuracy but i now know that variable isnt a variable any more.
 
It's enough to make a grown reloader scream.

How would you know that any variation was caused by the 1.4 grain difference? I mean really! The combined weight variation between case, powder, and bullet, assembled, was inside a 1.4 grain spread?? By Gosh! Sometimes I think bored reloaders should have their scales locked away until it's time to do actual reloading. They spend far too much time fretting over "weight spreads"!! :rolleyes: ( :D )~Muir

Muir I couldnt agree with you more, but then again, sometimes I just can't help wondering.
 
Muir I couldnt agree with you more, but then again, sometimes I just can't help wondering.

I think that is the problem with reloading. Most of the time I'm a "near enough is close enough" type person but then just occasionally some sneaky little thought makes its way into your brain that perhaps some insignificant variable might be important and then you read about some bloke on the internet who thinks that taking it into account has reduced his groups sizes and...

Yesterday I went out to shoot my rifle at a local range as I'd cleaned it after a soaking on Monday evening and it takes a few shots to settle down. I didn't even put a target up or get myself a lane but rather borrowed a lane a friend was using. There was a white target board up and it happened to have a black mark on it so I just aimed at that and fired 3 rounds in quick succession without much care for exact aiming. I let the rifle cool a little and my friend did some shooting and then I fired another 3 at the black mark. When I went forward I had 4 in one hole and two slightly out of the hole but it was still a 1 inch group for 6 shots. The cases had been reloaded a very many times and were so dirty as to be almost black and my reloading consisted of neck sizing them, cleaning out the primer pocket to allow a new primer to seat and loading them up with a Hornady Spire Point which is about the least expensive bullet I can get my hands on. Certainly they are no good for benchrest but for deer stalking when the fouling shots shoot a 1 inch group any accuracy problems I have don't lie with the rifle or the ammo but rather the person doing the steering.
 
Muir I couldnt agree with you more, but then again, sometimes I just can't help wondering.

Wondering about what? In life, and especially shooting, there are some things you can't change. The weight of loaded ammunition is one of these: It just is what it is. Frankly, that is a tiny bit of variance for loaded ammo. The maker should be proud of it and you should worry about more important things. (You can choose what those things are to be! :))

Now the thing is that this thread has split into two topics. You weighed loaded ammo and much of the response has to do with weighing and sorting components by weight for reloading. That practice is OK if you want to lavish your hunting loads with extra hours of work. I shot cast bullet benchrest -a very demanding sport as you must make your bullets- and I sorted by weight. I paid dividends on paper when I didn't screw up. But that was bench rest, and like Caorach and others have pointed out, hunting loads seldom need that kind of precision. In another post I put up some photos of a group I shot with a .222 handgun at 100 yards. The cases had been fired in my Winchester M-70 and for some reason, set aside in a bag. I remembered why when I went to seat the bullet: The necks had work-hardened to the point of not holding the bullet but for the slightest bit of grab at the lower end of the neck. I just seated then a little deeper than planned and crimped the bullet in place. It shot MOA with these hapless handloads and three of the five were in a cloverleaf. This with a handgun. The thing is that I applied good, consistent reloading technique. The cases were crap but all exactly the same length, primer pockets clean and new primers seated well, and the powder within .3 grains from my hopper. The bullets seated squarely and then crimped for uniform neck tension. The results were great because I spent the time manipulating those factors which I could control: The poor brass condition was out of my hands. In the end, imperfect shooting technique spoiled more groups than the ammo.~Muir
 
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I seem to have stirred up various responses here, so perhapsa little more explanation is needed.
The thing is I find the whole reloading thing, fascinating, frustrating,rewarding, quite often all at the same time. The fact that you can take any given rifle and improve its performance, when using factory ammunition, by carefully producing ammunition tailored to that rifle is satisfying to say the least.
The problem here was, having previously only ever used beamscales, I had recently acquired a new set of digital scales and was playing with them, as you do.
In the past my bullet of choice has been the Hornady interlock sp, I have found that any box of these bullets usually has two or three distinct groups by weight, and that by sorting bullets by weight into different batches, I have been able to reduce my group sizes and therefore get more meaningful load development results, quicker, hence obtaining the digital scales to make the task easier.
I wasn’t sure what variation I should have expected in the cases having never weighed or felt the need to weigh them in the past. Whichever of the various case preparation operations we chose to perform, they are all designed to minimise variation and quite a few of them involve removing minute quantities of brass. Hence my question whether to weigh sort before or after case preparation.
In conclusion, weighing and batching the cases as a one off operation doesn’t actually take a great deal of time when taken in consideration against the amount of time taken to perform the various other operations I perform when producing ammunition.
Will I batch weigh and cull cases in future, I don’t know, I guess I’ll try it and see what happens and then decide whether it’s worth it or not, but I can’t see that it can do any harm to get rid of the really heavy or light cases out of a batch.
DG
 
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For hunting I just sort the brass to within 0.5grn and don't bother weighing the bullets.
Now let me tell you how anal it can get.... I shoot F-tr
Trim all brass, chamfer internal and external mouth, bump shoulders to 0.02 of once fired length. Clean primer pockets. Weigh brass to within 0.25grn, sort bullets to within 0.1grn. Only load from same powder batch. Seating depth to within 0.01 plus a hole host of other tweaks checks that I'd be too embarrassed to post here
Result : quarter MOA at 1000 yards....... When I have time to shoot :)
A case of 1.5-2grn heavier will send you 10" or so high at a 1000yrds (all other things being equal) which in truth translates into bugger all for general stalking purposes.
Ps. If you are looking to cull cases your are better off discarding ones that show signs of pressure signs,,a simple test is turn an unused primer face down (shiny side up) and if the case / primer pocket slides down over the primer easily then discard the case. Another simple test is to take a case holder to the range with you when testing loads ( to see if each fired case will still slide easily into the holder)
 
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For hunting I just sort the brass to within 0.5grn and don't bother weighing the bullets.
Now let me tell you how anal it can get.... I shoot F-tr
Trim all brass, chamfer internal and external mouth, bump shoulders to 0.02 of once fired length. Clean primer pockets. Weigh brass to within 0.25grn, sort bullets to within 0.1grn. Only load from same powder batch. Seating depth to within 0.01 plus a hole host of other tweaks checks that I'd be too embarrassed to post here
Result : quarter MOA at 1000 yards....... When I have time to shoot :)
A case of 1.5-2grn heavier will send you 10" or so high at a 1000yrds (all other things being equal) which in truth translates into bugger all for general stalking purposes.
Ps. If you are looking to cull cases your are better off discarding ones that show signs of pressure signs,,a simple test is turn an unused primer face down (shiny side up) and if the case / primer pocket slides down over the primer easily then discard the case. Another simple test is to take a case holder to the range with you when testing loads ( to see if each fired case will still slide easily into the holder)

That is the only post on this thread that I have taken any notice of - thanks for posting it
 
I think it would be important in smaller calibre as it could mean getting some compressed loads.

i find even lapua cases are different, when using 26 grn varget you can see the difference as the neck is full.

Must say i sort mine by head stamp, very little difference between cases of a same batch.

i find compressed do shoot differently than non compressed and it is more difficult to get the COL the same.

Just my thoughts.

D
 
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