308 LC 12 brass - primed: OK it is UGLY - BUYER beware

[SidecarFlip]

Makes sense but I didn't have the same problem you had... At least I don't think I have had...

I'll have to 'stay tuned' on that. It was showing in stock where/when I bought it on Sunday morning.

When I have a ship confirm, I'll post it on this thread.

Not withstanding, I have enough on hand for thousands of loads (literally) right now, in manyf flavors.

If need be, I can share but I won't sell quantities on any site including this one. My 8 pounders can sit in the dark, on the shelf for an indefinite amount of time.

I've always maintained that removing components (like propellant and primers) would quite effectively advance Obama's agenda and I consider nothing to be beneath the unscruplous pecker head's morals and warped principles.

If I didin't get another ounce of propellant from this day forward, I still have enough on hand to last the rest of my life. Primers too.

You see, I don't go out and expemd ammunition for the sake of making noise. I sight in a firearm and then, other than a fouling shot, the firearm gets used in the field, while hunting. If I shoot nothing, I come home with one less cartridge than I went with. period. Last hunt in NM, I took exactly 10 rounds of 308 and 10 of 338 and brought back 8 of the 308 and 7 of the 338. Same with my pistols. My carry Kimber, I can shoot quite accurately and quickly. I haven't discharged it in at least a year. I do cycle shells through it, but I don't ignite any. I don't need to. I know what I'm capable of and what the gun is capable of.

At my last pistol shoot, I could have sold all my bricks of Wolf Match Extra for a handsome profit. I choose not to. Not because I'm a ***** but because I'm not at all sure when and if I will be able to get it again, and. I like Match Extra for indeer league shooting.

The last AK I sold, I sold with (2) 640 round ham cans of 7.62-39 Wolf. I don't need the junk (I consider it nothing more). I did not, however, sell any of the brass cased, boxer primed 7.62-39 that I have in my ammo chest because it might be of use down the road.

Human nature is about banging throough ammo and handloads, but that premise has to change because it's too hard to procure tiday and I just don't mean propellant, I mean all components.

 

[westcliffe01]

I grew up in a city of over a million where 60%+ were unemployed and where there was no such thing as welfare except of the "affirmative" kind (relieving someone else of their belongings...). There were plenty of hungry and starving people and so I'm not inclined to waste either. There used to routinely be over 20 murders a night. At one time there were over 3000 cops killed per year in the country and the list of murdered farm families stood at well over 4000.

I'm just a bit new to the game based on how long it takes to get a green card, so my intro back into the world of firearm ownership was a couple of years after mr "O"'s election the first time. I consider myself fortunate that the timing worked out the way it did, since I was able to buy some nice surplus stuff when it was still available (DAG 308 ammo, Yugo 7.62x39, a couple of Yugo SKS rifles, the "good" Yugo 8x57 ammo etc etc). That stuff appears to be history for the moment.

I have never got a good stock of reloading components organized although I am closer to my goal than ever before. If I can get some 308 ammo loaded up, then I have a small batch of new 8x57 to do using Hornady match bullets, a second batch of 243 ammo to load up for fireforming in the Ackley chamber. For the moment the 243AI and 308 is going to cover what I should call medium to long range requirements until I get going again on the 6.5x284. Right now I have no need for reloading 223 and I just got rid of most of my 222 Rem stuff.

I have 500 cases boxer primed for 7.62x39, but have not developed a direction for reloading yet. I have wanted a bolt gun in this caliber but they seem harder to find recently. Some of the reviews have also not been very favorable (CZ 527 2.5" groups out of a $700+ rifle).

I suppose it is like the first time you buy yourself an SLR camera. You look at it and think, wow, that was quite expensive !.. But later, after spending money on film, developing, making prints etc etc, you realize that the materials is where the real money is, just like ammo.

 

[eddybo]

Back to the brass. I got mine today the 12 LR was in great shape the 50% of other headstamps were not too impressive. There were a lot of 11s that looked okay and tens that looked pretty cruddy.

Got 500 deprimed and all the 12s tumbled. I wish that there had been more than about 50% of the 12s. Other than that I only tossed one case out of 500.

 

[SidecarFlip]

Yes, the brass...lol

Mine was all 13, every case but 2 and those were 556 of all things but then I didn't get the asphalted necks, I got the range brass. 4 out of 500 went in the scrap can along with my non-ferrous turnings. Those 4 stuck in the F/L die. I can 'feel' when they are about to stick but it's so easy to get them out I just give the press an additional push. So it rips the base off. No biggie.

Incidentially, I always use Hornday 'One Shot' aresol case lube, again, with no issues. I use the bread bag mix method, a couple dozen cases in a ziplock bag, spray in some case lube and rock and roll the bag (closed of course) for 30 seconds, pour out, let sit for a minute and size.

Not everyone has a hydraulic broach but I do so it's a simple matter of puching the expander/decapper rod out the bottom of the die with the case coming along and then chucking the case in a lathe and necking off the offending bottleneck and extracting the rod. never bought a stuck case tool. Don't need one.

My cases were all over the spectrum diameter wise, some were obviously ignited in oversized chambers while others sized easaily. All mouths grew a bit, some 15 thou, most a lot less. I brought everything to 2.005 give or take 2 thou. Cut the crimps and countersunk the chamfer with a countersink, cleaned the pockets and the flash holes and relegated them to the shelf, primed, for later

 

[westcliffe01]

Did you get the unfired stuff, or the "once fired" ?

Since the brass head stamp does not resolve finer than the year, I have to suspect that there must have been part of a single batch that was bad, resulting in the entire batch being scrapped.

In the final analysis, I don't think I lost more than 5% of what i bought and none of the stuff that was left over split when I did the full length size operation after I annealed.

So in retrospect, I would like to tone down the title to this thread, but of course the first post has "expired and I can no longer change it....

If sure doesn't help confidence when you start picking cases like that out the pile though...

As far as I know, the 308 is not too hard on brass, and the ejection out a semi automatic is likely to be considerably harder than the wear it will get in the chamber... Given the alternatives ($36-$40+/box of 20 rounds - if you can get it) I will probably be satisfied with how this panned out. It sure was a lot of work compared to buying new brass for $0.50/case though... The slightly less that $1/case I paid for my Lapua Palma brass is not looking so bad after this experience, but that is never going near my gas gun...

Back to the brass. I got mine today the 12 LR was in great shape the 50% of other headstamps were not too impressive. There were a lot of 11s that looked okay and tens that looked pretty cruddy.

Got 500 deprimed and all the 12s tumbled. I wish that there had been more than about 50% of the 12s. Other than that I only tossed one case out of 500.

 

[SidecarFlip]

The only new brass I've ever bought was 338 in Lapua branded and Nosler branded. Everything else is OF.

My personal preference for OF brass is of course Top Brass (Sarch). They do the grunt work, the FL resize, the trim (to my requirement) the cleaning and reaming and the priming if I specify that. Right now you can't buy anything from them. They actually have the foresight over profit motive. They know they are operating at or above capabilities so they've pulled their site for new orders to catch up. Thats a quality oriented business IMO.

Keep in mind that all bottleneck cases grow no matter what the caliber (diameter). It's the nature of the case and how the brass flows under pressure.

Growth depends on many varibles including chamber dimensions and load. My benchmark is I resize FL on OF brass and then trim to the minimum SAMMI specification +- 0.002-3. That gives you an allowable growth of about 0.010-0.015 or a couple reloads before the case exceeds the maximum limit.

At that point they get scrapped because as the case grows, the growth comes from somewhere so the case is getting progressively thinner, usually in the bottleneck itself.

Straight wall cases hardly ever grow and I've reloaded some pistol cases 10 times. The issue with a straight wall case is in the area just above the base. They want to 'belly out' and that precludes chambering in a tight chamber like a Wilson or Kimber. The cure for that is setting the resize die so it resizes the case all the way to the base. Of course the powder charge is appreciably less and the case pressure is less as well. My 44's typically load at 5-6 grains of Tite Group or LIL Gun, so you can see, it's a different animal entirely.

You can make a pound of propellant go a looooong way.

My jugs of H1000 are over in Adrain at UPS for delivery tomorrow.

 

[westcliffe01]

Re: 308 LC 12 brass - primed: worked out good after all...

I thought I would return to this thread after a long while since it took me this long to finally get my hands on enough Varget Powder to actually reload a batch.

First of all, I would like to apologize to Wideners for the negative publicity for their product, since it turned out that the fallout rate for split necks was about 2%. The balance of the product turned out to be fine.

I got some "heat" for the primitive annealing process, but I just completed reloading the last of it and neck tension was very consistent on every cartridge.

I have been working up a load for my brass and it ended up at 44gr of Varget behind a 175gr SMK loaded to a 2.8" OAL. What I will say is that there is a clear difference between the "regular" and "LR" brass. The depth of the primer pockets on the non LR brass was a lot more inconsistent and generally too deep. The non LR brass appeared to be thinner walled since the same 44gr charge of varget would sit lower in the neck than for LR brass. It was a compressed charge for all of them though, so I'm sure it will help with consistent ignition. I used CCI 200 primers throughout.

For those than need to know, the group below was my first group at 100 yards today:

And this one was the last.

I did not do so good with the 185 Bergers and interestingly, the target 185's are a bit different shape than the hunting 185's. So I an going to have to work on the jump value to try to find the "sweet spot".

If there is a moderator reading this, is it possible to re-title this thread as per this post so I can redeem myself with the folks at Wideners ? Thank you.

 

[SidecarFlip]

I'll redeem you....

I just got another 1000 OFMB LC 12-13 cases in 308 from our dear friends and of the 1000, there were 3 unusable cases. Not bad, in as much as they overshipped by 15 so I came out 12 to the plus.

BTW, I'm swimming in 308 brass presently, if you run short.

Have plenty of primers too (just don't invert the box and open it)......lol