Lapua brass inconsistencies
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I just got some 223 Lapua brass, and just out of curiosity weighed it. I was shocked at how inconsistent it was in weight. I just weighed it to the full grain and came up with 65 pieces in the 95 gr range, 12 in the 96 gr range, 22 in the 94 gr range and 1 in the 93 gr range. The 93 one was pretty much 93 even and some of the 96 grain ones were almost 97 grains. That’s a pretty drastic difference. I have lake city brass that’s more consistent than this. Any of you ever seen anything this bad from Lapua? I bought two boxes and they are both from the same lot, I haven’t opened the second one yet.
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I've never weighed mine out. I can't shoot good enough to tell the difference.
I've heard stories that bench rest guys would buy one box of a lot, weigh it like you did, and check how consistent it was. If it was a good lot, they'd order more of that lot from Lapua. If not they'd turn around and sell it. Take that for what its worth, like I said, it was a story.
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I’m gonna use them I was just shocked at how much variation they had. I got 300 pieces of 6.5x47 brass from two different lots that all weigh pretty much the same so it threw me off when these were so different
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I resized 300 new pieces over the holiday.
I noticed two inconsistencies :- I did not get exactly 100 pieces in one of the boxes. I'm not sure how common that is, I should keep better track.
- I had one piece of the 300 that would not slide into the shellholder. I examined it for any type of burs, but I believe the entire rim was significantly thicker than spec.
Neither of which affect my strong preference to use the brand whenever possible, now and moving forward, but were just observations none-the-less.
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I use only new LC brass in the .223 bolt gun. For a couple of $s more than what 100 Lapuas cost you can usually get 500 LC.
They may take a bit more prep but they have been very consistent for me. Excellent run-out etc.
Accurate shooter articles have them showing greater capacity than the Lapua and harder bases....
http://bulletin.accurateshooter.com/2014/05/how-hard-is-your-brass-5-56-and-223-rem-base-hardness-tests/
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I use to weigh and sort brass. Then once I weighed brass and measured volume. I full length sized, trimmed, uniformed the primer holes and pockets then weighed the empty brass followed the same case full of water and subtracting the two. Turns out there was no correlation between the weight of the case and the case volume. There are just too many other variables aside from case thickness that can affect weight. I stopped weight sorting brass.
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@a_marks said:
Turns out there was no correlation between the weight of the case and the case volume.
There it is folks.
The only method you can use to "weight sort" brass is right there. Also realize that I'm able to achieve 1/4moa results without brass sorting of any kind. I cull based on live fire testing, but that also takes multiple firings.
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I don’t weight sort brass either, I just weighed this brass out of curiosity and was shocked at how much variation it had, still have every intention of using it. I don’t sort bullets either but have checked some before out of curiosity as well. I can’t say if sorting bullets/brass makes any difference or not cause I’ve never felt the need to try it. I know some people that weight sort everything including their primers and swear that’s the only way to get consistent loads. Maybe that’s what works for them and makes them fell all warm and fuzzy, so who am I to say they are wrong. I am happy with the consistency of my loads and they preform well for me. I guess in the end for the people that feel the need to sort everything is kinda of like having a Promentheus, or weighing down to the kernel with some other method, it gives them confidence in their equipment which is what really matters at the end. Is it mechanically necessary? Probably not. Is it mentally necessary? For some very much so.
