PrecisionRifleBlog.com A DATA-DRIVEN Approach to Precision Rifles, Optics & Gear

I’ve been using Norma’s brass for the 7mm Remington Magnum lately, and thought I’d write a review over what I’ve found so far. Norma is a high-end, European brass manufacturer similar to Lapua.  They use the highest quality raw materials, and have very narrow tolerances and tight quality control.  Like Lapua, they drill the flashholes on their brass instead of punching them.  Almost all other brass manufacturers punch their flashholes, which can cause inconsistency and require that you debur the flash hole. Also like Lapua, Norma anneals the neck on all of their brass.  However, that isn’t as apparent as it is ...

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 ...