3. Starline rifle brass; any good?

Starline rifle brass; any good?


  • Anyone have experience with their products?

    Got an email from Starline Brass this a.m. introducing .223 brass to their line.....

    Great Shots Newsletter
    "We are excited to add the .223 Remington to our growing line-up of high-quality rifle brass. The .223 is one of the most widely-used centerfire cartridges today. Starline's new .223 brass is produced with the same rigorous quality control standards that Starline has become known for, and is available at half the price of comparable quality cases."

    $62.50 for 250 cases and FREE shipping even to Hawaii and Alaska!!!

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  • I've never used it as until a few months back all my reloading is bottle neck rifle cases. But they have a strong following and great track history with straight walled brass.

    For that price, on .223 it would be a cheap gamble to find out how good it is. It should be at least okay enough for AR blasting rounds. It may not be up to match quality though.

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  • I will give it a try and report back.
    I've been using nothing but new LC in the bolt gun (initially) and 1x fired LC and mixed commercial in ARs.

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  • I have been curious on rifle brass...but not wiling to go through the process to try it.

    I use fired brass for 9, 40, 45 and I was gifted several thousand new 357 and 44 mag in other brands. Really the only experience I have with starline is in my bro's 10mm and the 500 s&w. He is still on the first firing for those brass...but for pistol brass it all loaded very nicely.

    I am on the 3rd firing on some of my 500s&w brass with VERY stout loads and the necks have not split yet. I am annealing the 500 smith brass between firings too though which should help with split necks.

    The 44 mag brass I was given was brand new brass with a "midway" headstamp. In comparison to the starline...it has started splitting after about 4 stout loadings...and I am hoping for much better with the 500 smith brass. When I have shot out all of this 44 mag brass I will for sure be switching over to starline at least to try it.

    In my opinion...range brass is ok as long as you are not chasing velocities or anywhere near max loads...and as long as a misfeed once in a while is fine. If you really want to chase max loads then you need consistent cases and in my opinion that requires that one start with virgin cases so that they know the history of them. Starline are as reasonably priced as any other and they have a great reputation hence the reason I chose starline.

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  • Looking at their new rifle brass they have 6.5 CM in both small and large primer available..
    https://www.starlinebrass.com/order-online/new-rifle-calibers.cfm

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  • Banned

    @mamalukino said:

    Looking at their new rifle brass they have 6.5 CM in both small and large primer available..
    https://www.starlinebrass.com/order-online/new-rifle-calibers.cfm

    hmm.. same cartridge, same company making the brass, but small and large primer offerings... could be fun to test the two against each other. There sure are a lot of people set in stone arguing that small primers are so much more accurate than large primers.. I don't have first hand experience with it so my mind is still open. I wonder if it's mostly just because small rifle cartridges tend to have a lot less recoil than cartridges with large primers.

    I have only played around with Hornady brass in my 6.5 Creedmoors.

    Price per each:
    Starline Large: $0.50
    Sig Sauer: $0.5098 (coming soon to midway)
    Starline Small: $0.60
    Hornady: $0.5519 to $0.7598
    Peterson: $0.73 (coming soon, comes in a plastic ammo box)
    Lapua: $1.2299
    Nosler: $1.3298
    Norma: $1.5556

    Prices vary site to site, so I used one site to calculate the cost per each. I see on a different site you can get norma brass for about $1.11 per each...if you order 2000 pieces lol.

    6.5 Creedmoor per 250 pieces

    Starline is about the same price as Sig Sauer, soon to be available at midway

    It's a little cheaper than hornday (if you get the "bulk pack" of 100), about $70 cheaper if you get it per 50.

    $182.48 cheaper than Lapua (if apples to apples is used here, their small primer 6.5CM is more expensive, therefore only $157.48 cheaper) (Lapua is in boxes of 100)

    $207.45 cheaper than Nosler. (boxes of 50)

    $263.90 cheaper than norma brass (boxes of 25)

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  • @brittel
    If you order from Starline the shipping is included and that is a pretty big deal here.
    I am going to try some .223

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  • Banned

    @mamalukino said:

    @brittel
    If you order from Starline the shipping is included and that is a pretty big deal here.

    Well that's a good bonus. Shipping charges weren't included in my cost breakdown.

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  • I'm curious as to the quality, from what I have heard Starline makes some good cases. Of course that was mostly straight walled cases previously, we shall see.....

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  • Ordered 250 .223 cases directly from Starline, cost $62.50 including Priority mail shipping. Good deal so far. Received it very quickly and racked the pretty cases out into 50 count trays...
    cOHp7Nl.jpg
    Yep, that is 252 cases received, an instant bonus (insert laughing emoji here)....
    I weighed them out tonight and they ran from the lightest of 98.1 to the heaviest of 99.2 grains. Most in the 98.5 to 98.9 batch. From L to R the patches run 98.1-98.4; 98.5-98.9 and 99.0 to 99.2 not a bad spread, however this is pretty darn heavy brass for .223. They average about 6 grains heavier than new LC brass.
    S8SuiG8.jpg
    I measured the neck thickness and runout of 15 cases. They were pretty consistent running between .012 and .014 thickness and the runout was not bad for new brass with the shoulders running .0005-.003 and necks .0015-.008
    This should improve after the first firing.
    Looks pretty good so far, I will try some light loads and see what numbers come back.
    Pressure tests and workup coming up.

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  • @mamalukino said:

    I measured the neck thickness and runout of 15 cases. They were pretty consistent running between .012 and .014 thickness and the runout was not bad for new brass with the shoulders running .0005-.003 and necks .0015-.008

    Make sure you mark and use the same cases for measurement after firing. I'd like to see a before and after. ... because the 'before' numbers aren't very impressive.

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  • @orkan said:

    @mamalukino said:

    I measured the neck thickness and runout of 15 cases. They were pretty consistent running between .012 and .014 thickness and the runout was not bad for new brass with the shoulders running .0005-.003 and necks .0015-.008

    Make sure you mark and use the same cases for measurement after firing. I'd like to see a before and after. ... because the 'before' numbers aren't very impressive.

    Got 10 measured and loaded ready for the next range day.....and I agree those numbers are not impressive, new LC is consistently better with very low neck runout. Hopefully they improve, otherwise they get to be loaded for "spray and pray".

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  • This was a small sampling of 10 randomly picked cases from a 250 case lot.
    I was happy to see the improvement over the new case numbers.
    One case, #6 had to be eliminated due to a dent sustained on the upper case/shoulder junction and neck when it was ejected.
    All cases were under .001 runout on the case shoulders with most around .00025- .0005.
    As to the neck runout, #6 and #8 cases were the only 2 over .0015....#6 had the dent and # 8 was only very slightly over. 7 of the 10 came right in +/_ .001 ; #8 showed the most improvement going from .007 to slightly over .0015.
    All showed improved runout numbers over new unfired, some substantially.

    The only thing that I am leery of is the case weight, these average 6 grains heavier than LC16 although old batches of Lapua .223 came in even heavier.

    Next is doing a load up for a reduced 100 yard load with H4895.

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