Best commercial cartridges for reloading?

[Joejojoba111]

Just looking for opinions, if you were going to buy a case of cartridges to fire, and then re-use for brass, what would they be?

And furthermore, on a purely whimsical note... Where would you get them?

 

[dakotasin]

black hills ammunition red box. headstamp is 'bha match', and it is good brass. short of that, i would use winchester silver or white box because i prefer winchester brass over remington.

i would avoid s&b, and federal. the rest (hornady, pmc, etc etc), are in between somewhere, and not offensive to use; not good, not bad.

probably would get it from cabela's, but i haven't shopped around for loaded ammo - it is a rare occasion that any of my guns sees factory ammo, so i really don't care who has the best price on factory ammo.

 

[armoredman]

Avoid S&B, and throw anything marked A-Merc in the furnace!
I am going through a stash of PMP South African brass right now - good stuff.

 

[only1asterisk]

My response would depend on the cartridge in question. Are we talking rifle or handgun? Blasting ammo or all out accuracy?

David

 

[Smokey Joe]

Best brass

Assumption (Yeah, I know that's dangerous) that your "best" means "highest quality," there is only one answer: LaPua for rifle brass, Starline for pistols. Both are kinda pricey, and well worth it.

For example, LaPua rifle brass has drilled flash holes, not punched. Therefore, no wasted time truing up and de-burring flash holes. Case-to-case weight variations (this means variations in case capacity) almost non-existant.

LaPua is used by many benchrest shooters (those fiends for absolute accuracy) do you need any other reccommendation?

Starline is similarly rock-solid quality, low variation case-to-case.

I used to use Win and Rem brass for reloading, my own boughten brass and range pickups. There is just NO COMPARISON in quality!!!

"Gee," you'll say, "But it's expensive." Well, as the man said, if you want good oats you pay for good oats. If you will put up with oats that already passed through the horse, OTOH...

 

[P0832177]

Red and Black box BHA is good stuff, except the 338 Lapua, it is all Win made and BHA headstamped brass. So that is good stuff!

I use Lapua for my 308 along with Win. brass. I do not like Federal 308 brass as is does not seem to allow for the velocity I can get from Win or Lapua brass!

I have used Federal for 243 with no complaints, where as the Federal 223 in my experience is soft and does seem to enlarge the primer pocket quicker then with other brands.

Blue box is once fired 223 and as such has the primer pocket already swaged for you to reload. If you fired some new mfg. LC or WCC headstamped brass you have the crimp of the primer pocket to deal with. Either by hand with a chamfering tool, or mechanical via a Dillon Super Swage or RCBS makes a swager tool that is press mounted for larger lots.

I caution the use of bulk once fired 308 brass with a military head stamp. More then likely it was fired from a machine gun. They have notoriously sloppy chambers! You would need a Small Base die to run them through for the first time.

I only distinguish for my purposes Rifle brass, where as I only load the 45ACP for handguns. Who needs any other caliber? J/K! For the 45ACP I just sort per headstamp so as to keep certain head stamps for 625 use and the rest goes for USP use. IE Fed and Win are for the 625. Rem and PMC are for USP use where I can recover the brass. And, all other headstamps are used for loads where recovery of the brass is suspect! I have 45ACP brass that you can no longer read the headstamp! I know it is from the late 80's. The stuff is just about indestructable!

 

[1911 guy]

Winchester

I use winchester brass simply because there is a vendor near me and I can replace brass easily without too much wait or hassle. Also, my .223 likes a particular Win. load from the factory that I duplicate. Same case cap., etc.

 

[rbernie]

+1 on the PMP - it's as good as Lapua or Norma and a lot cheaper. It's also dimensionally accurate (rim, case head) in many chamberings such as 7x57 and 303R, whereas Federal, Win, Rem, PMC, and others are not.

 

[Brian Williams]

*-*

Starline

 

[taliv]

i like PMP as much as the next guy, but to compare it to lapua/norma is a stretch I think.

 

[10MMGary]

Factory loaded or components only, Starline, Hornady, S&B, Norma, Federal, Win, Fiocchi<sp?, WW or WCC. Its all been good to me. I only load my own fired brass or use new brass.

 

[ocabj]

Handgun brass? I'll shoot anything except Amerc. I'll use my own purchased brass or range pickups. People who refuse to use handgun brass left by other people are way too paranoid. If it looks good, then go for it. If you reload long enough, you get an eye for spotting bad brass. Of course, I only load for 9mm and 45ACP as far as handguns go. If I loaded for .40S&W, I might change my opinion about that.

Rifle brass? I rarely buy factory ammo so I use Lapua, Winchester, Remington, and Grafs unprimed. I use Lake City from surplus or overrun ammunition that I shot. I never use range pickups because no one ever leaves they're brass! Occasionally someone does, but it's maybe 20 cases of Federal or Remington, and it's not enough to use to load up a decent amount of rounds. I like to load in lots of 50 or 100 for rifle. And I shoot a lot of rifle (.223, .260, .308, .30-06, 8x57, 7.62x54R, 7.62x39, 7.5x55, 6.5x55).

 

[Joejojoba111]

excellent, exactly what I was wondering. Thx! BWT I shoulda mentioned I was looking at .223, at least partly because the stores always seem to be out.

 

[Bullet]

You might look here -

http://ar15.com/forums/topic.html?b=3&f=16&t=222888

 

[Ol` Joe]

I`m thinking of trying Nosler, been hearing real good things about it.

http://www.nosler.com/brassofferings.html

 

[ocabj]

excellent, exactly what I was wondering. Thx! BWT I shoulda mentioned I was looking at .223, at least partly because the stores always seem to be out.

I load .223 specifically for an AR-15. I've used LC, WCC, Winchester, R-P, and PMC brass for it. All work fine.

 

[heypete]

I just dig through the brass buckets at the range for rifle brass (I only have dies to reload .30-06).

I've reloaded Federal, Winchester, Remington, PMP, Lake City '69, and Poong San (Korean stuff, headstamped "PS" and a year. Looks like mil-surp, but boxer-primed and non-corrosive). I bought a hundred virgin Remington cases to use for my "match" ammo (I don't compete, but I have some good loads that I like to be consistent about).

All the brass I've reloaded as performed quite well, giving me .5-3" groupings at 100 yards with Winchester 147gr FMJBT or 150gr Sierra GameKing FMJBT (Win is cheaper and more accurate, in my experience), IMR 4064 powder, and CCI 200 primers. I think I can load better than I can shoot.

I haven't worn any brass out yet, where the primer pocket is too loose, or any other such stuff...I'm careful to inspect all my brass closely and make sure it's suitable for use.

 

[Joejojoba111]

Yea, blue box Black Hills seems perfect, because less work is less work. And as a bonus spending less money is good too!

 

[Powderman]

If you will put up with oats that already passed through the horse, OTOH...

Ewwwwwwww!

 

[redneck2]

If you look on e-bay you can find some decent deals...just keep looking and don't necessarily overbid on the first batch you see. I got a lot of .223 W-W's for cheap

 

[wanderinwalker]

If you are looking to load .223 for an AR-15, I will attest that LC is great stuff. For my match AR-15, I load almost exclusively in LC cases. WIN and WCC are also pretty good. Avoid Federal, as it is soft and won't tolerate too much abuse.

 

[The Bushmaster]

Any name brand FREE cases such as Winchester, Remington, TZZ, Federal, etc, etc.....Oh. forgot Starline and Speer.

 

[Gewehr98]

I've gotten fussier over the years.

For 7.62mm NATO/.308 Winchester, it's either Lapua or Lake City. If I ever get a CETME or HK91, I've got some Cavim brass I'll use, and then discard if too badly fluted.

For .30-06, it's Lake City or Federal.

For 8mm Mauser, S&B is perfect, with a mil-spec thickness suited for European-level loads.

For .303 British, I also like the S&B brass. Heck, the S&B ammo is top-notch for the rifle, too!

For .45-70, I like Winchester, PMC, or Starline. BP loads, it's vintage balloon-head Rem-UMC.

For 7.5x55 Schmidt-Rubin, it's Norma.

For 6.5x55 Swedish Mauser, I also use Norma.

For my 6.5-06, I use 7x64 Brenneke brass, made by RWS or Norma.

For .223 Remington, I've taken a real shine to the Norinco brass. No primer crimp, and actually quite consistent. Wish I could find more of it!

For .44 Special, it's Starline.

For .45 ACP, anything but A-Merc. Bent too many decapping pins on that stuff!

For .357 Magnum Desert Eagle Ohmygawd 1600+ fps loads, Winchester Nickle-plated.

For 7.62x25 Tokarev/CZ-52, I use Starline, but have a bunch of S&B ready to go.

 

[Desert Dog]

What Gewehr98 said. I have similar experiences with most of those calibers. The only one I can add is thet Federal makes the best brass for reload for .45 Colt. It seems to last the longest. PMC is also a good reloadable brass for this caliber.

That being said, I use Starline brass for more reloads than anything...

 

[Clark]

The .223 PMC target [not PMP], on sale, is just a little more than surplus
ammo, but more accurate for me that Federal Gold Match [and we all know
how expensive that is, and never discounted]

http://www.cheaperthandirt.com/ctd/product.asp?dept_id=20216&sku=74001





Gewehr98,
I have bags of new Starline 7.52x25mmTokarev brass, and am willing to trade for your used S&B brass - Seattle area.
The only way I can get the S&B is to buy the ammo and pull the bullets.