Think twice before buying WW brass

[gamestalker]

What in the world is going on with Win. brass? It seems like lately every time I turn around I'm having problems with Winny brass.

A buddy brought by 120 pieces of once fired brass from factory ammunition, along with his new Rem. 700 300 WM rifle to load for him. So I tumbled all of it and started resizing today, when I noticed a piece of brass with a badly split neck, which was Winchester brass. There were 2 boxes of the WW brass, 1 box of Hornady, 1 RP, and 1 FC. I inspected all the head stamps, and the only brass with problems was the WW brass, nearly all of it was either split, or had small separations starting at the mouths. All of them were from the mouth down, rather than starting at the shoulder and extending upward.

So I measure the necks looking for any significant anomalies, and discovered that the necks were .005" thinner from the mouth to about mid way down the neck.

That's it for me, I'm going to avoid WW brass for a while in hope that they might recognize and correct their QC issue. Good thing is I have lots of once fired Hornady 300 WM I can fix him up with, so problem solved for now. This just really bums me out though, cause I've used tons of WW brass over the years with very few problems, over the last couple years though I've been running across problems like this.

GS

 

[ljnowell]

I can't speak for the rifle brass but Winchester has always been my choice brass for handguns(for once fired, new brass I prefer starline). I get the most reloads out of it in 38 special and 45 acp. When you reload over 10k 38s per year it matters. The primer pockets tend to be tight but that us good for longevity.

 

[Vodoun da Vinci]

Same here - no experience with rifle brass but I have a lot of Winchester pistols brass harvested as once fired factory in .32, .380, 9mm, .38 and .357 and have never had a problem with a single round.

Perhaps the issue is confined to rifle brass? Maybe they had a "bad run" or two....

VooDoo

 

[Tom1417]

A lot of my my magnum brass is Winchester in 7mm and 300 win. I've never had a problem with it but then again it was bought as new brass. I also have loaded untold amounts of their handgun brass and it has been flawless to except that some of the 38 specials I've have run across had thick rims that barely fit the shell holder. I wonder if you ran across a bad lot of brass. Or possibly the rifle that fired it had a loose neck.

 

[moxie]

Perhaps the Win. brass was fired out of a different rifle(s), with different, hotter, loads, loaded by some guy with a really heavy wrist.

 

[sage5907]

Winchester brass is my preferred brass because it is not expensive and there is a lot on the market. I have never had a problem with split necks. I usually load between 2900 & 3000 fps. In my experience split necks in any brand of brass occur after several loadings of super high pressure and flattened primers. If I had split necks I would watch the primers for signs of excessive pressure.

 

[AABEN]

I have loaded some WW brass 20 times and it is still good. I do NOT load hot loads! I load 223 243 25.06 270 30.06. I load in the middle of the chart. Hunting loads is 1 grain short of a full load.

 

[CraigC]

Maybe it's because you emasculate it by calling it "Winny"?

 

[fguffey]

Gamestalker, I do not know, it could go back to the chain of custody, I have been informed cases were once fired, after going through 12 (240 cases) complete boxes of belted magnums I was left with only one response 'FANTASTIC!'

I am a case former, when forming cases my favorite is new, when forming cases for long chambers my favorite case is the case that has been fired in a trashy old chamber, if I do not have new or cases fired in trashy old chambers I use 280 Remington cases. A fire forming rleoader can not miss with the 280 Remington case, unless, the threads on the press and the feeler gage is not a related term.....to reloading.

New and or once fired cases, I have no reservation about necking a 280 Remington case up to 35 Whelen and or 338/06, necking up the 280 Remington to 338/06 will separate (sort) the once fired cases from the multi fired cases. The failure rate increases by as much as 60% on plated cases. Then there are cases that are hardened, I have been told I can not do this and or that because the case has been worked hardened, and as usual I ask how would I know if a case has been worked hardened.

New/unfired cases get a shock when fired in large chambers. When fired the case must form to the chamber. New cases will form to the chamber from the rear and or from the front, I am the fan of forming cases from the rear to the front when fired and I am the fan of cutting down on all that case travel.

There has to be a cut-off day. I have WW head stamped cases, all of my WW head stamped cases are 15 + years old. In the beginning there was Western Cartridge, 1929 there was no more Winchester, Olin owned both then came the WW, Winchester Western. Western continued using Winchester head stamps like WRA, Winchester Repeating Arms.

F. Guffey

 

[gamestalker]

I too have had decades of great results with WW brass, both bottle neck and handgun. But it just seems like the more recent bottle neck stuff is hit and miss quality.

All of this WW brass and previous other calibers has either been new, or it came from once fired factory from the gun I'm loading for. This particular problem is with factory ammunition, once fired and from the same rifle I'm loading for.

Upon closer inspection tonight, I see the factory WW ammunition I'm currently experiencing neck problems with, is almost certainly caused by the crimp Winchester is using. I found that every split developed at the end of the crimp line. I'll try to explain this better. The crimps on this 300 WM are in 3 places around the case mouth. At the end of each crimp, there is a deep indentation, appears the tool is cutting into the brass, well no appearance to it, it's actually pretty obvious on the loaded factory cartridges as well. And as I'm backing the ram down during resizing, the crimp is so excessively deep that it is catching really hard on the expander. I'm not referring to a normal click we experience with previously crimped brass, this is hanging up on the way out of the resizing die. No problems with the Hornady, FC, or RP though.

The other flaws I'm experiencing are with brand new Win brass, badly rippled shoulders that require FL sizing to bump the high spots back enough to allow for chamber fit. And also very inconsistent necks that have excessively thick areas. And like I said, this is a new problem, I've always liked WW brass and have been loading with it for more than 30 years.

GS

 

[moxie]

Well, Winchester needs to hear from you in detail. I'm sure they'll appreciate the feedback.

 

[Doug b]

Olin bought Chase brass right before winchester went under.Chase has a plant in a town about 20 miles from me they made valves and such pretty hard stuff. I noticed people started complaining about winny brass shortly after the purchase.Maybe they don't have the expertise to make soft brass. Just a thought.

 

[gamestalker]

Moxie, you really think Winchester would take notice of my opinion / complaint? I'm not a high volume reloader, which makes me think they would just write me off as some old guy being too nit picky, which I honestly feel I'm not.

GS

 

[climbnjump]

The other flaws I'm experiencing are with brand new Win brass, badly rippled shoulders that require FL sizing to bump the high spots back enough to allow for chamber fit. And also very inconsistent necks that have excessively thick areas. And like I said, this is a new problem, I've always liked WW brass and have been loading with it for more than 30 years.

GS

I've had spotty luck with new Winchester brass also. I've had to toss about 5 or 6 cases from each bag of the last couple of bags I bought for a .270 WSM - so that's about a 10% scrap rate. I had both the problems listed above as well as a couple cases with big missing chunks from the neck. How those made it though quality control, I have no idea. I also had a couple where the shoulders weren't exactly rippled as stated above, they were "folded".

 

[RainDodger]

It's not shouldered brass, but it is Winchester brass - I just bought 1,000 cases of .45 ACP brass from another member of this forum and there a ton of Winchester brass in there. All of it has sized nicely and hasn't shown a single problem. In fact, it is the PMC brass that I've noticed, that runs through the sizing die much easier than all others, meaning (to me) that I figure they're thinner than the other brass. No problems with Winchester brass so far.

 

[Peter M. Eick]

Bad lots of brass happen. Write Winchester a letter, include pictures and lot numbers and see if they will replace it.

I got a bad lot of 357 maximum brass years ago from Remington and I was getting body splits. I had about 40% split on the first firing. Remington sent a nice email back, apologized and replaced the full lot of brass (500 pieces). I am still using that brass today and the original lot I still have a few splits every time out.

 

[spitballer]

I bought some Rem economy-line ammo some years back that had a similar crimp. Never thought to reload it, but maybe one of those mandrel neck formers would work.

 

[Ky Larry]

I'm not sure where the brass was bought or if it was fired in your buddies rifle. If it was bought, you have no idea where it came from. How do you know it was once fired? It could have been fired multiple times with insanity loads.

 

[Poper]

gamestalker,

Is there enough neck left if you trim off the crimp? If so, why not try trimming off the offending crimp before sizing? I have done this with .270 fired brass using the cheap Lee trimming tool and a hand drill. I had to take an additional .015"-.020" off the tip of the cutter length pin, but it was a simple and quick thing to do with a dremel. As long as you have enough neck to work with, that is. And the Lee trimmer set-up is cheap enough that you aren't out anything.

Poper

 

[45lcshooter]

Since i started shooting at age 11 I have always had problems with Winchester brass. I started out shooting 30-30 (i skipped 22 and shotguns) When i would eject a spent caseing 70% of the time the casing would be ok. the other 30% would have a split neck.

So when i started reloading at age 17, i started looking at Winchester brass again. And the only brass that did not split a the neck for me, was brand new brass, but the factory loads were brand new to. With new reloadable brass my split neck went down to 10%. I do not anneal any of my cases. I get 4-7 reloads out of my other manufactures already fire cases.

Every now and then I will split a neck or shoulder on another manufactures case. But no where near to Winchester.

 

[7.62 Nato]

"A buddy brought by 120 pieces of once fired brass from factory ammunition, along with his new Rem. 700 300 WM rifle to load for him".

How does he know it was really "once fired" brass?

 

[gamestalker]

Poper, I thought about doing that, as I've done it with .270 and other cartridges that have longer necks in the past, but 300 WM hardly has enough neck in the first place.

GS

 

[gamestalker]

7.62 Nato, he knew, I knew it was factory brass because he bought it, and fired it. And he doesn't reload, and in fact bought it at Cabela's, that's how he and I both know it is, what it is.

GS

 

[gamestalker]

45lcshooter, I've been reloading WW brass for over 30 yrs., both new, and once fired. I generally get 10 - 12 loads from most of my bottle neck brass, and I don't anneal either. But it just seems like recently I have had more issue than usual with their brass, new or factory loaded ammunition. However, the crimp they use on their factory stuff has always annoyed me, so I have tried to avoid using once fired WW since I began reloading, but factory new has been pretty decent until the last few years.

Spitballer, I would think a mandrel type former would certainly help iron them out, but me doesn't have one.

It's good to see I'm not completely alone on this.

GS

 

[Chuckin' TV]

I had a brand new Winchester 243 case break my decapping pin because they didn't punch out a flash hole!!!! I was pretty mad. And I noticed a lot of blow by on the shoulders when I took my first shot with it and poor accuracy. They might not be too bad now that they are fire formed. I will be neck sizing them. But I lost a lot of faith in Win brass after using this lot. I have a bunch of older stuff that works fine.