Did I trim brass too short?

[biologicole]

I was trimming brass this weekend on my new hornady case prep center and accidentally trimmed my 300 win mag brass to "2.600 -- all 500 of them -- instead of the "2.610 trim-to length. I didn't notice until the very end when my buddy stopped by and was checking out the machine. The brass are all very consistent at ".010 short of the recommended trim-to length. My question is this...have I ruined the brass by trimming them so short, or will I just lose the ".010 worth of crimping power in the neck tension? I am primarily loading these with 165gr sierra match kings for long range target shooting. Has anyone ever done this and then loaded and shot the rounds? What were the results? Can I still get decent accuracy from these brass or should I trash them? Any comments are greatly appreciated as I am in a dilemma on whether to continue reloading the brass or not.

Here's an interesting observation on the brass:

Winchester -- Way more brittle than the other brands

Hornady -- all once fired by me and none of them needed trimmed, even at the shorter than recommended "2.600

Remington and Federal -- not much difference

 

[Shmackey]

You're fine.

 

[Walkalong]

Yep, don't sweat it.

 

[Funshooter45]

They will be just fine. Yes, you will lose a small amount of neck grip, but it won't bother you. I routinely trim my 7 MM Mag brass to 0.005" shorter than the specified "trim to" length just because I figure it might save me a round of trimming later on. The brass on those big high pressure magnums grows quite a bit in length when fired.

RCBS makes an X die that supposedly eliminates case stretching when FL sizing and supposedly eliminates the need to trim cases. I hear it works pretty good too. But they tell you to start off by trimming it to 0.020" less than max length the first time you trim. That would be the same as your 2.600" you have now, so RCBS doesn't see a problem with trimming them a bit shorter than normal.

 

[243winxb]

300 Winchester Magnum

SAAMI list 2.600" as the shortest lenght. http://www.saami.org/PubResources/CC_Drawings/Rifle/300%20Winchester%20Magnum.pdf

 

[chevy_dmax]

Send them to me please........

You should be just fine.

Bill.