Which 45ACP brass do you prefer?

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KeithB

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I have had great luck with Federal brass. some reloaded 5 or 6 times and still looking good. also no problems loading Winchester brass.

Just bought 500 once fired R-P brass and 1000 once fired Federal brass all cleaned, polished and resized all for $97.50 incl shipping. Should last me a while.
 
I tend to load with winchester whenever the choice presents itself. With that said all of the major brass makers: winchester, R-P, Federal, starline etc., you'll be fine. I do however like to reload my batches with the same brand of brass.
 
Any and all .45 brass I've found/purchased has worked just fine. My 1944 batch did start to get the occasional mysterious failure. I'm looking into it and plan to file a complaint with the war department. .45 brass lasts until you loose it.
File 13 the A-MERC.
Covet the Starline, Cor-Bon and Hornady
 
Any good looking brass found on the range, except Amerc. If I buy brass, it is generally Starline or Winchester. My .45 brass has all kinds of headstamps.
 
Depends on what you're shooting. For IPSC, I take anything I find. As long as it clears the guage and isn't split, it will do. For Bullseye however, I only shoot Winchester...for two reasons: it's plentiful and reasonably consistent. However, when I shoot an actual Bullseye tournament, I load my special batch of Winchester brass where each weighs exactly the same. Had to go through thousands and thousands of new brass to get 300, all weighing 82.7 grams. Before going through all that weighing, I tested all the major brands for consistency and there really wasn't that much of a difference so I went with Winchester because it was competitively priced and available.

I've never done a longevity test but I seem to toss a lot of nickle with split necks, regardless of brand. The strongest seems to be brass marked Match 35, if I remember correctly. Don't see it a lot and I don't think it's available new. Military maybe?
 
what brass to use

I have been shooting bullseye for 35 years and use what ever is loaded, except for 50 yards out doors. That has to be very accurate. I have brass from 20years age. Heck 3.6 of Bullseye doesn hurt the brass, just sliding in and out of the barrel. I even have 1000 Midway brass--nice stuff. (who makes it?)
pap
 
I prefer Winchester and Federal for forming into .400 Cor-Bon, because they're the heaviest walled of the commercial brass. I load it all, though, since my .45 shooting is mostly informal. I've very seldom seen a case split in .45, but it does occasionally occur.

Starline will make brass with a custom headstamp, but you have to order a minimum. If I remember correctly, it's 100,000 rounds, but don't hold me to that, since I'm working off memory, and it's not what it used to be.....

Hope this helps.

Fred
 
Been using the same lot of WCC Match brass since 1991, and although the headstamp is nearly rubbed away, it still loads great. Use the smallest amount of belling as possible, and as said you will loose it before you wear it out.

Funny, but I was reading a 50's era reloading manual and one fella mentioned that he loaded rounds so light in his 9mm pistol so that the slide did not cycle... Said he did not want to chance loosing the valuable 9mm cases. How times have changed.
 
Galil.556,

I owned a Llama 9mm in the early 1960's, and there was absolutely no 9mm ammunition available in my area, east of Los Angeles, in the San Gabriel Valley, where I lived at the time. I ended up making 9mm cases from .38 Special cases I turned down on my drill press. I was finally able to make about 50 of them, but it took a long, long time with a file to get them formed properly. They worked through the gun just fine, but the only bullets I could find were lead 158 grain round nose .38 bullets. I finally found some data for heavy bullets in the 9mm and shot the gun for awhile, but ended up selling it because there wasn't any factory ammunition to be had, period. I asked several gunshops in the area if they could order some, and they all said it was a European caliber and not available in the U.S.. Yes, times have changed.

Fred
 
I use Win, Rem, Midway, starline, or what I find after an IPSC shoot. The Canadians and Fed's don't pick their brass. My best bullseye loads were with Lake City Military Brass.
 
Still have several hundred WCC Match 78 cases and you can almost read the headstamp. Mostly I run Federal only because I like their primers.
 
I use whatever I pick up at the range. Headstamp matters not to me. I even load AMERC. Not had any problems (except for one AMERC that had the flash hole far enough off-center that the depriming pin didn't want to push through).
I'm staring at a five-gallon bucket full of mixed, cleaned, unsorted .45 brass. It all gets dumped in the case feeder by the scoopfull and loads the same.
 
TZZ, Star, Winchester, Federal, S&B. All the rest is made for plinking.
 
Federal or Starline are my favorites, hands down. Good brass and consistent.
Winchester is good brass but primer pockets seem tight relative to others
R&P is plentiful and allows primers to feed easily as they have a nice chamfer don't think the brass is that good though.
S&B and CCI are my least favorites
 
All my .45LC is Winchester, after all, it's the right thing to do. :)

Typically I have bought Winchester for pistol, but recently I made a large purchase of Starline on recommendation by so many on this and other boards.

I am ashamed to say that my ACP is a mixed bag as I was a scavenger at the range and I have so much of it, I'll probably never go through it all. My Kimber shoots it all with great accuracy, truth be told.

One day I will standardize all my rifle brass, but to date, R-P, Win and Fed have served me well.
 
always a mixed bag...if its free its for me! Mostly winchester though i like thier nickel plated brass
 
Winchester is the most plentiful where I shoot. I think the local PD switched from 40 S&W to 45 Auto :) I've picked up 600 in the last two visits.

I find Federal to be the best built and use it for the heavy stuff. Sometimes R-P doesn't have thick enough necks to hold the bullets tightly.
 
Speer

I have bought some really clean once fired brass from Southern Belle - the inside of the case looks brand new! I only load 45 ACP and reload the case until it splits. Most of the time I can't keep track of how many times I have reloaded a particular case but I know for some it it more than a dozen times.

Speer seems to have a tighter primer pocket too.

John
Charlotte, NC
 
I have thousands of TZZ (IMI I believe) brass from the Navy. They have lasted so long I have yet to load another brand. If I were to have to buy brass it would probably be Winchester, Winny works for all my other calibers.
 
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