Peterson cartridge .308 brass
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Well I went and ordered 500 pieces of .308 brass from Peterson cartridge company, despite the weak showing @rhyno found with their .260 brass.
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I've found several reviews that say it's equivilent or better than Lapua, and if that turns out to be true, I hope to get at least 10 firings from each.
Unfortunately I don't have a rifle worthy of firing this stuff, so until my rifle makes it back from Travis @tscustoms my review will have to wait.In the mean time I'll have to get a mandrel die and round out the necks. These ones didn't come in the nice cardboard case and they suffered a little during their travels.
What's a good test for brass quality other than durability? I'm planning on weighing a few dozen and mic-ing the necks.
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Water weight will give you a good measure of the volume. Measuring runout is another good thing to do. Other than that, just measuring thicknesses and such at various locations will give you an idea of uniformity. The neck/shoulder junction and up is pretty important regarding neck thickness uniformity and runout.
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@orkan said:
Water weight will give you a good measure of the volume. Measuring runout is another good thing to do. Other than that, just measuring thicknesses and such at various locations will give you an idea of uniformity. The neck/shoulder junction and up is pretty important regarding neck thickness uniformity and runout.
Will do.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the brass should be fired once before any of these measurements become valid, right?Also will punching the necks with a mandrel suffice for preparing new brass, or is there something else I should be doing? Full length sizing seems unnecessary.
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Doing the testing prior to firing will be a greater indicator of their manufacturing process capabilities.
Doing it again after firing will also have value. Using a mandrel on the necks is fine in my book.
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Looking for expanding/turning mandrels and dies.
Is there any rule of thumb as to which diameter I should use?
I've found them from .001 under caliber to .004 or more under.
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I use the sinclair setup. I'd recommend getting the best ones you can. (carbide)
The size you are going to choose depends largely on when during the process you're going to do it, and what for.
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I went and took 25 brand new cases (5%) at random from the 500 cases I received from Peterson Cartridge and marked them around the neck at random in the cardinal positions (12,3,6,9) with a sharpie. This was to serve me as a reference as to where to take four thickness measurements around the case.
Then I took the mic and went at it, which yielded me 100 data points. At the same time I took a OAL measurement and threw the case on the chargemaster to get a weight.
Next I went and dug out the scientific calculator and my old stat textbooks, reminded myself how to calculate standard deviation, a came up with a neck thickness mean of .01447 and a SD of 0.0008. The high was .0160 and the low was .0129 (on separate cases) The variation in thicknesses on an individual case in some extreme samples was almost .0025 from one side to the other. The case weight mean was 177.2 and SD was 0.49. The high, 178.6; the low, 176.2
Statistically speaking, thats not very impressive.
For comparison I weighed and mic-ed some new .223 cases from Lapua (didn't have any new .308). The weights varied by 1.4 grains from one end of the batch to the other, and the neck thicknesses varied by .0005 around each case. Thats a greater variation in weight, but less so in neck thickness.
I don't have enough experience to interpret these numbers and how they compare but I feel like I shouldn't be happy with Peterson's showing. I was planning on calling them up tomorrow and asking some questions regarding the tolerances they're holding on current lots. If this is standard I'll work with it.
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I'd be very interested in a water weight test.
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@orkan
I'd be happy to oblige, is there a trick to doing it with unfired brass?
All the tests I've seen used fired brass with the spent primer still in.
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Some time ago, I did quite a bit of weighing both the empty cases and water weighing of military brass.
The conclusion, I as well as many others that have done this, is that dry weight and capacity do not correlate to the extent of reliability.
Water weight will give you a truer measure of capacity.
I used fire formed brass trimmed to identical lengths and used a hypo to fill the cases with distilled H2O.
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@ragnarnar said:
@orkan
I'd be happy to oblige, is there a trick to doing it with unfired brass?
All the tests I've seen used fired brass with the spent primer still in.http://www.xxicsi.com/primer-pocket-plugs.html
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@orkan said:
@ragnarnar said:
@orkan
I'd be happy to oblige, is there a trick to doing it with unfired brass?
All the tests I've seen used fired brass with the spent primer still in.http://www.xxicsi.com/primer-pocket-plugs.html
Those are nice, first time I've seen them.
I used a spent primer turned upside down to plug the cases.:smile:
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Cheap, effective and I can accomplish that today. If that doesn't work I'll go with the cash option.
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I took a up close pic for you.
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Using @mamalukino 's technique I took the water weight of 10 cases.
The Internet had a couple methods on how to do it, but ultimately what I settled on was placing each case on the chargemaster and zeroed and then using DI water with a speck of soap to cut tension, put dropwise into each case with a syringe until I got to the mouth of the case. '
The mean of ten cases was 53.38 grains of water.
The high 53.6 the low 53.3
The mode is 53.4
The SD .092I plan to repeat this after these cases are fired.
If there's any other measurements anyone wants to see please let me know.
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@orkan said:
As an aside, does anyone have any experience with 21st Century's neck turning setup? I need an expander die.
Their stuff looks well made, I happen to know George Gardner uses their neck lathe.
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I'm officially giving up on this stuff. Fuck it.
I've tried neck turning, I've tried full length sizing with expander, I've tried full length sizing and then expanding in a separate operation, I've used two different two different brands of dies, I've tried annealing, I've tried 175, 168 and 150 grain bullets of differing brands, I've tried it with virgin, once fired and twice fired, I've tried, I've tried, the list goes on.
I can't get my group smaller than an inch and a half at 100 at a respectable velocity. I'm getting mid 2300 with and a group about an inch for four shots. I suppose it's possible it's my reloading techniques, but I'm using a coax and widden dies and have done pretty well on other cartridges in the past.
I'm not gonna blame the rifle, it's Travis's work and can stack factory Norma 168's into half inch groups or better.
It could be me, maybe I got retarded and forgot how to shoot since last time.
All this stuff is getting demoted to AR10 minute of man ammo or positional plinking/practice rounds for my hunting guns, I just bought 3 boxes of lapua like I should have from the beginning.
If anyone wants to try this crap, I'll be willing to share.
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@ragnarnar said:
If anyone wants to try this crap, I'll be willing to share.
I've got some 3x's fired lapua with blown out primer pockets from running them too hot that I will throw in to whoever wants your brass :)
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Before giving up entirely, if you don't need a "hot" load, try this with your 168 grain bullets: 39.0 grains of 4895 loaded to 2.800" OAL. I use H-4895 while the book load is for IMR-4895.
I got this from the Nosler manual and in my .308 it gives 3/4 MOA 5-shot groups. Velocity, according to the manual is just above 2400 fps. Not a hot load but I'm more interested in accuracy than speed.
I loaded these in brass from the Arsenal factory in Bulgaria. Neck thickness from the factory measured .015 ~ .016"; pretty thick. I turned them down to .012" and they shoot fine. I suspect they're similar to your Peterson cases.
I'm turning the necks on a second set of 100 Arsenal cases only these will be .013". Once I've worn out the first set, I'll use the second set.
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Just curious, how much did this stuff cost per 100?
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About 60 bucks. 300 for the 500 pieces.
At the moment Brownells has lapua brass at 69 bucks on sale. I had a coupon for free shipping and 20 off 200 so my order of 210 came to 190ish. That's 63 bucks per hundred.
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Yeah it's not that much cheaper than Lapua even when Lapua isn't on sale. I paid $75/100 for my Lapua brass. Hell even Hornady isn't worth it for the saving. You pay $30-$35/50 of Hornady. Why not get the best for a few bucks more.
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Hindsight being 20/20 I'd pay the difference for the lapua. At the time however people were swearing up and down it was as good as lapua, so I thought I would take a chance.
It seems like hard brass, and it'll probably do well in a AR 10 platform.
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People are still swearing it's great brass.
I have my doubts.
I'd be curious to see how Alpha brass stacks up, but Lapua is known and works, and is available so why change?
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@rhyno I've heard lots of good things about alpha.
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I'm a novice at best, so I'm willing to accept there's more I could have done to make it work for me. Or maybe it's a lemon lot.
If I start having challenges with this new Lapua, I'll revisit this stuff. Otherwise it's relegated to positional plinking stuff or fodder for my yet to be built AR10.
It's not worth the work that I've put into it.
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The plot thickens. Or something.
After giving up on this stuff, a rep from Peterson found and contacted me. After I got done bitching about the old lot he sent me a new lot of brass to try.
It just arrived in the mail, that's lapua on the left, the old lot center and the new lot right. All untouched/unfired. I'll get some new measurements when I finish moving and have some time, but it looks better already.
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I am interested to see how it goes. I would have been tempted to ask him to pay for the other components you wasted in testing the other lot. Seems to me they owe you more than just another lot of brass.
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I also got the same offer.
The new brass is much much better. The necks are more consistent, and thin enough to run in my rifle without issues.
@ragnarnar how are the flash holes? Mine look like they need to be deburred.
And they ship them in ammo boxes now which is a nice plus.
But I don't have any spare powder to be able to do any load testing with them, I'm out of h4350 and have very little RL16.
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@rhyno IMR 4451 is a good substitute for h4350 and a hell of a lot easier to find. It's not quite as temp stable as 4350 but pretty close to varget from my experience
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@rhyno
Just eyeballing them they look like they're drilled. I'll probably debur l them when I get a chance, just to do it, but they look on par with all the lapua or Norma I've seen.@dddoo7
I should have. I didn't even think about it. It was still a learning experience for me so not entirely a waste.
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@orkan I just got a shipment of 100 pieces of Alpha .260 Remington brass in and I have to say I am impressed with the packaging at least. Sent the 100 in a flip up reloading box along with a hand written thank you card. Brass is annealed from the factory. While I don't have all the tools to measure neck thickness, run out, ect. like you guys have I'm still really looking forward to using this brass and comparing it to the Prime brass I was using before. May also compare it to the new .308 Lapua brass I have even though it is a different cartridge. Pictures to follow.
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Alpha brass in packaging.
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