Hi all;
I am new to reloading. I got into it when everything on the market dried up (my experience is therefore very limited). I have started loading fired brass for my .308 semi-auto. I have reloaded several brands of brass (Nosler, Federal, Remington, Winchester, Hornady...). The Nosler brass I have recycled in the past has been just fine.
I recently purchased some Silver State Armory .308 168 gr. HPBT and 175 gr. HPBT and some Nosler Custom Competition 168 gr. HPBT. Unlike the last couple of boxes SSA, these used Nosler headstamped brass, not SSA. This brass was terrible.
In the SSA ammo, a few rounds happened to lose their primers after being ejected, and a few more lost their primers in the box after I had collected the spent cases. When reloading, I found that the primer pocket was actually too big to retain primers on six of the casings (I am using CCI Large Rifle).
Also, I noticed that the case heads were a little chewed up after ejecting. Several cases had burrs that I filed off when reloading.Of the six cases that wouldn't retain a primer, three of them needed burrs filed off of them. There wasn't any problem with the brass collected from the Winchester ammo I used the same day. The Nosler brand ammo's brass was a little chewed up, too, but not nearly as bad as the stuff from SSA.
Another oddity is that the headstamp from Nosler brass that I got from SSA brand ammo appears a little different from the Nosler brass that I got from Nosler brand ammo. The decimal point in ".308 WIN" is absent in the Nosler brand ammo, but is included in the brass from SSA. Also, the SSA stuff uses the flat top 3 (looks like an "ezh" - Ʒ) in the ".308," instead of the common rounded three used in the Nolser brand stuff. In the Nosler stuff the "O" in "NOSLER" is more rounded than the one used in the SSA, and the "0" in "308" is less rounded than in the SSA stuff. Finally, the text seems to be printed in finer, shallower type in the Nosler brand ammo. In any case, these two samples probably didn't come off the same machine.
I was wondering if anybody else has seen problems like this before? Could the problem be that SSA is using Nosler seconds, or something? Maybe somebody is boot-legging Nolser brass? Is the Nosler stuff just a little softer, and more prone to be chewed up when fired or extracted than other brass? Anybody have an idea, suggestions, etc.?
Again, I am new to reloading, so any tips, tricks or suggestions would be appreciated.
Thanks
I am new to reloading. I got into it when everything on the market dried up (my experience is therefore very limited). I have started loading fired brass for my .308 semi-auto. I have reloaded several brands of brass (Nosler, Federal, Remington, Winchester, Hornady...). The Nosler brass I have recycled in the past has been just fine.
I recently purchased some Silver State Armory .308 168 gr. HPBT and 175 gr. HPBT and some Nosler Custom Competition 168 gr. HPBT. Unlike the last couple of boxes SSA, these used Nosler headstamped brass, not SSA. This brass was terrible.
In the SSA ammo, a few rounds happened to lose their primers after being ejected, and a few more lost their primers in the box after I had collected the spent cases. When reloading, I found that the primer pocket was actually too big to retain primers on six of the casings (I am using CCI Large Rifle).
Also, I noticed that the case heads were a little chewed up after ejecting. Several cases had burrs that I filed off when reloading.Of the six cases that wouldn't retain a primer, three of them needed burrs filed off of them. There wasn't any problem with the brass collected from the Winchester ammo I used the same day. The Nosler brand ammo's brass was a little chewed up, too, but not nearly as bad as the stuff from SSA.
Another oddity is that the headstamp from Nosler brass that I got from SSA brand ammo appears a little different from the Nosler brass that I got from Nosler brand ammo. The decimal point in ".308 WIN" is absent in the Nosler brand ammo, but is included in the brass from SSA. Also, the SSA stuff uses the flat top 3 (looks like an "ezh" - Ʒ) in the ".308," instead of the common rounded three used in the Nolser brand stuff. In the Nosler stuff the "O" in "NOSLER" is more rounded than the one used in the SSA, and the "0" in "308" is less rounded than in the SSA stuff. Finally, the text seems to be printed in finer, shallower type in the Nosler brand ammo. In any case, these two samples probably didn't come off the same machine.
I was wondering if anybody else has seen problems like this before? Could the problem be that SSA is using Nosler seconds, or something? Maybe somebody is boot-legging Nolser brass? Is the Nosler stuff just a little softer, and more prone to be chewed up when fired or extracted than other brass? Anybody have an idea, suggestions, etc.?
Again, I am new to reloading, so any tips, tricks or suggestions would be appreciated.
Thanks
