Ammo & Handloading

Many handloaders believe an accurate load starts with quailty brass.  The more uniform the brass, the better accuracy you can expect.  So there are a lot of questions that commonly arise: What is the best brass? Should I use “once fired” or “military surplus” brass? Is quality of Lapua brass really worth the added cost? I stumbled upon some info on 6mmBR.com about a year ago containing some data that can be used to compare of brass uniformity between manufacturers.  I’ve tried to refer back to article several times … but I always have a hard time finding it again, because it is buried in ...

I recently weighed 153 pieces of once-fired Remington 223 brass that had all been full-length resized, trimmed to length, deburred, primer pockets uniformed, and neck turned.  Here is the resulting data: Average = 90.8 grains Standard Deviation = 0.71 grains Average Deviation = 0.53 grains (average of the absolute deviations of the data points from the mean … 0.53gr actually isn’t that bad) Variance = 0.51 Extreme Spread = 4.0 grains Extreme Spread as % of total weight = 4% (this is significant) All data was gathered using a RCBS ChargeMaster 1500 Powder Scale, which is accurate to +- 1/10 grain and was calibrated ...

Although some people claim the bearing surface of a bullet (the sides of the bullet that touch the rifling as it travels down the barrel) has more impact on a bullets flight, variations in weight also have an impact although the degree of impact is up for debate.  We can all agree that a 35gr bullet would fly much differently than a 80gr bullet shot out of the same rifle.  But is does a 54.8gr bullet fly noticeably different than a 55.3gr bullet? Regardless of whether there is a measureable difference based strictly on bullet weight, I believe the weight of the bullet is strongly correlated to the bearing surface.  To ...