[Grandpa Shooter]

I read a lot of threads on here about a failure to do this or that, read sales threads where people want to know if the seller has "this" or "that" headstamp.

I have to say, that other than an obviously poor individual case, I rarely care what headstamp anything is. I have shot competitively with pistol and rifle and never found any one headstamp to be greatly better or worse. For what I was doing or expecting, what I picked up or bought from someone else was fine with me.

Do any of you really care, or have definitive proof that one is better than another, or is it a matter of personal taste. For my part, I don't see why they make cars or trucks in anything but white. Pants are blue, shirts are some color of blue or tan, boots are black and shoes are brown. Makes getting dressed much simpler that way. And yes I like vanilla ice cream just fine.:rolleyes:

[cdrt]

I sort my brass since I shoot Bullseye and it makes it easier to find mine when we're cleaning up the range during and after the match.

That said, I have not found any difference between Remington, Federal and Winchester .38 Special brass. They all load okay and shoot out of my Clark 1911 .38 Special autoloader.

I shoot WCC brass out of my .45 ACPs because I have found it to last a long time and I have a lot of it. :) I do not shoot some brands of .45 ACP brass; Remington and SBC primarily because their rim is not as substantial as the WCC...kind of thin and wimpy. Just a preference; I'm sure it's good brass, just not impressed with it's composition.

I've used all sorts of rifle brass; Winchester, Remington, Hornady, Norma and Lake City. All have worked fine and I really don't have a preference except in my M1. That rifle gets LC brass.

[Linear Thinker]

Grandpa,

I will mention a few reasons to care about headstamps, off the top of my head:

1. Some makes are junk, you need to sort them out:
. A-MERC brass in any and all calibers has incorrectly sized primer pockets, making it practically non-reloadable.
. Malaysian military brass (MAL headstamp) has undersized flash holes, your primer punch-pin will get stuck.

2. Some brass uses unusual primer size, eg. non-toxic primer brass from Winchester and Federal uses small pistol primers only in all calibers. So, if you assume that all 45ACP brass uses large pistol primers, you will get a rude surprise while progressively loading 45ACP and coming across a NT shell.
You MUST separate the NT-headstamped brass.

3. Military brass is usually thicker and heavier than commercial, with correspondingly less internal volume. So, if your pet rifle load has been developed with commercial brass, if you try the same powder charge in a military case you may get pressure signs such as blow-back, set-back and hard extraction.

4. Some brass makes are better than others. When I really care about quality of rifle handloads, I will use Norma, RWS, Lapua, IMI-Match, FED GM brass, in that order. Starline is my favorite pistol brass, but any American commercial make is OK, but see my NT brass caveat.

LT

[evan price]

If you're just making practice/plinking ammo, and you are not playing in the deep end of the pool regarding heavy charges, the different case volumes are so small that it won't matter.

If you shoot bench rest or match competition, then yes, any and every variance needs to be dealt with and neutralized to make everything as homogenous as possible & as repeatable as possible.

Personally with .45s I use whatever I find. Found a batch of TZZ Match brass not long ago, it's nice. I have loaded boxes of A-MERC with success. I personally don't have WIN up in my top 5 favorites. For some reason it seems more prone to corrosion.

CBC
Speer
CCI
WCC (Yes, it's Winchester, but it's military spec and a little nicer than commercial)
*--* Starline

[Navy joe]

I care but not as much as some. With rifle I care more, there is a difference in LC ann Win .308, why stuff the same load in there? Pistol is anything but Amerc usually, but I did make a series of 9mm "premium loads" utilizing WCC cases only and Hornandy SXT. Most accurate 9mm I've ever shot.

[Mt Shooter]

I think that all the same head stamps shoot more consistently. Probably just me, but I do know for sure that the shiny ones shoot much better than the dull ones!

[Mt Shooter]

evan doesnt have any win. brass because he sold it all to me.

[TexasSkyhawk]

Other than the junk brands, I don't worry so much about the brand as I do keeping the brands together for my serious target/match/hunting rounds.

All my .44 Special match stuff is Starline or Winchester. All of my hunting rounds in 30-06 is Federal. Match grade in .308 is LC. Etc.

For my grab bags of just general shooting, I don't bother to separate any calibers by headstamp. But for my bottleneck serious long gun stuff, I keep it separated and log how many times it's been fired/reloaded and annealed.

Jeff

[ArchAngelCD]

I think the manufacturer of the brass you use is important. In both handgun and rifle brass I think Federal is best. I also like Winchester brass which I feel is a very close second. Most of the other "big names" like Rem, CCI, Magtech, Speer and a few others will all serve you well but I favor Federal and Winchester.

[DEDON45]

I use just about anything in all mine... the exception is the truly awful AMERC .45ACP brass I run across... it's really crap, can't make a round that meets SAAMI specs with that junk.

[jfh]

I keep my brass sorted by headstamp--but mostly out of habit, and because the procedures I use keep it sorted with no effort on my part. Early on in my reloading career when loading .45ACP, I was taught to do that--and I tested the hypothesis that doing so produced better groups. I found it did NOT produce better groups necessarily--but it did produce more consistent groups, and final tweaking of the recipe usually resulted in more consistent and better groups.

However, that load did include good accuracy as a criteria. For the 38 / 357 SD practice rounds, it's probably unnecessesary--that is, I don't strive for target accuracy in my j-frame 2" practice.

Jim H.

[strat81]

Malaysian military brass (MAL headstamp) has undersized flash holes, your primer punch-pin will get stuck.
Are you sure on this? The batch of MAL I just prepped had normal flash holes but the Guatemalan stuff (G and IMG headstamps) had undersized holes.

To the OP, sorting can help with consistency and some brands just have better reputations than others. FC .223 brass is pretty much junk.

When in doubt, I get Winchester and/or WCC. It's plentiful and I haven't run into a lousy caliber from them yet.

[USSR]

For rifle ammo, yes. Lapua is the "gold standard" for quality rifle brass. Also, if you are shooting an autoloader which is tough on brass, LC brass is tough and will hold up to more reloadings than most commercial brass.

Don

[Halo]

I sort my brass by headstamp mainly because I like as much uniformity as possible in my batches, but for casual target shooting I don't think mixed brass will give you any trouble.

If you're loading near max, I think sorting the brass is more important. Some manufacturers have thicker case walls, which reduces the internal case volume. A load that was safe in other brass could result in overpressure in such cases.

[evan price]

Hey, MT, I have WIN brass still... need more?

WIN brass loads fine.. it's just not my favorite... luckily there is lots of it since Wal*Mart has the cheapest plinking .45 around. Been getting a lot of Mexican .45 "Aguila" lately.

I do sort out all the nickle brass separately, I have a 2-quart Ziplock full of .45 nickle brass of various headstamps, it's so nice and shiny...

[Marlin 45 carbine]

Hornady is the best pistol brass I've used w/Starline close second. Lapua is the best rifle brass I've used. surprise me that PMC is as good as it is.

[strat81]

The rims on my Hornady 9mm brass don't seem to hold up as well as other headstamps. It gets chewed up very quickly.