Winchester brass mixed calibers.

[jcvfdlurch]

I recently purchased a package of 100 Winchester 223rem brass. I went through my normal routine of chamfering and priming the cases. I charged 50 of the now primed casing. I started seating bullets in them and about the third round in the press gave trouble with seating. I proceeded to load a few more then encountered another problem round. My first thought was improper shape on neck. I emptied remaining charges and then deprimed all cases and resized them. When I was preparing to reprime them I noticed that one of the headstamps looked weird. I looked closer to find that it was in fact a 204 ruger casing. I examined all of the casings and found a total of 19 204 casings in the bag. These casings came from a seal package. I contacted Winchester with this matter and waited 2 weeks for a shipping label that never came. I ended up having to send them myself. Ihave not heard a reply from them yet. I learned an important lesson being always examine each casing before starting process. It cost me 95 federal gold match primers and several hours.:banghead:

 

[GLShooter]

What a bummer. How did you manage to stick a 224 bullet in a 20 caliber hole? Were you running an expander button down in the necks to straighten them as you loaded?

Greg

 

[jcvfdlurch]

Actually when trying to seat them in press it damaged the ballistic tip bullets and destroyed the neck of the first casing.

 

[GLShooter]

Yep that is a clue!! I load 204 Ruger and 20 Tactical and I learned that little issue early on. I also load 6X45 and a
6 MM bullet in a 223 neck doesn't work any better.

Greg

 

[jcvfdlurch]

Well I learned from this experience.

 

[jcvfdlurch]

I guess the part that has really ticked me off is how Winchester has dealt with it. The first person I talked to there stated that they would send me a shipping label from UPS to return the improper cases. He told me that they would only replace the 19 that were wrong pending inspection of cases and original package. I sent several email after not recieving the shipping label. I later spoke to a lady there and informed her what her associate had told me. I told her that in no way was that satisfactory. I ended up having to pay for shipping myself and have not gotten a reply or replacement. It has taken several weeks already.

 

[GLShooter]

I had a catastrophic case failure on a 204 Ruger Winchester case that destroyed a stock and a few other thing son my CZ. It was a hand load so it was on me but it was a load I had used along time.

I called Winchester and they sent me a FEDEX label deal. I sent them loaded ammo, new cases and fired brass for their evaluation. They sent me vouchers for 300 pieces of 204 brass.

I am surprised they have treated you so poorly. I'd be on the phone pushing them every day for a rebate on the shipping.

Greg

 

[jcvfdlurch]

I definately didnt have nearlyas bad of a experiance as that. I was loadin up a few boxes of rounds for my grandad as a birthday present. He was a few short but didnt complain. I know crap happens but they should be a little more proper on cleaning it up. I explained to the lady at Winchester that components are not cheap and getting hard to find. Especially around here.

 

[GLShooter]

It was quite a deal when that stock disintegrated!!

Yours was at least just a packing issue. Mine was a QC deal that cost me about $300.00

Greg

 

[jcvfdlurch]

I bet that was a scary experience when it did that. I would have been majorly pissed. It seems like they did not do much to make it right for you either. Im sure they used some sort of loop hole or excuse because it was a handload that did that.

 

[atblis]

I bought a bag of new Winchester brass a few months ago. Never again. Utter rubbish.

 

[GLShooter]

I bet that was a scary experience when it did that. I would have been majorly pissed. It seems like they did not do much to make it right for you either. Im sure they used some sort of loop hole or excuse because it was a handload that did that

Since it was a hand load I would not have expected them to do much. The brass voucher was a nice gesture any way.

It gets to the he said she said level in a hurry when it is a non-factory load. No harm other than needing a new stock, extractor and bolt head. The wood I lost was gorgeous and I did miss that but CZ took care of me at minimal cost. I liked it enough I bought another one that was even prettier than the first!!

Greg

PS: That rifle did a double on PD's at 360 for me last year. It still shoots.

 

[jcvfdlurch]

I have used Winchester brass several times in the past and had no problems. I will have to reconsider their products after dealing them and reading feedback on numerous sites of people having problems with their brass and customer service. I will not buy anything else from them.

 

[scottrussell]

I also have bought win brass for 44 mag. got rem's and starline at the same time. The rem's and starline were basically ready to load the win's were very rough and needed alot of triming to bring them up to par. won't buy them again

 

[jcvfdlurch]

I used several bags of Winchester in 30-06 and 25-06 and had no issues they were all uniform in size and length. I have tried Remington brass in 30-06 and 308 and had to trim almost every case. The lengths of their cases were far from uniform but they were correct caliber. I may be wrong but the Remington seamed to have slightly less case capacity than Winchester in 30-06. I have other issues with Remington ammo too.

 

[atblis]

The problem I had with my brand new Winchester 243 brass was that I ended up throwing away 10 cases out of 50. They had malformed necks that were compromised beyond being usable.

 

[Tim the student]

I've found other caliber brass (but only two pieces, IIRC) in Win brass that I bought. I tried emailing them a couple times, and never received a response. At the time, my schedule was not conducive to a call to them. (The time I would give up was not worth it.) It was only a couple pieces, so I didn't stress about it.

OTOH, given their lack of reply, and that it happened in the first place, I don't think I'll be buying any more, unless they are all I can find. They are my last choice of brass.

 

[gamestalker]

I've had too many problems with Winchester to want go into. Mostly with factory high powered rifle rounds and shotgun shells. I also bought some bulk bullets that were way out of spec., many were so far from uniform I wouldn't even use them. Some were .282" on one side and .286" on the other side. I tried to get Winchester to fix the problem, but they never responded. Needless to say, I don't buy their bullets after that first and only experience. Regarding the factory ammo. my Son bought, even though Winchester listed the lot numbers as recalled, they never responded to my complaint.
I continue to use their powders, but must say I always worry when cracking open a new canister.

 

[Waywatcher]

Add another tally into the column of "Bad experience with Winchester Brass."

Out of 50 pieces of 300 WSM brass, 4 had "ripples" near the base right where the case would stretch. Another 10-12 had off center priming holes. I followed the directions and resize/deprime brand new brass, and was wondering why it was so hard to complete the stroke. Luckily didn't break the depriming rod, but seriously. 30% of the brass from a brand new bag was rejects.

Never again.

 

[GLShooter]

Oddly enough the only issue I have had was that one batch of 204.

Since that first go around I have bought 1200 more 204's, 500 22-250's and 500 25 WSSM and never gotten a bad piece of brass out of any of them. When I was buying 223 I bought about 1000 pieces of it with the same good result.

That is why I was so shocked when I had this problem. Everyone else's experiences here have been very enlightening to me and I do appreciate it.

Greg

 

[Funshooter45]

Not that I feel any need to defend Winchester, but just 3 days ago I loaded up some new Winchester brass and did quite a bit of measuring and weighing when doing so, just out of curiosity because I had recently read some discouraging reports on Winchester brass on another forum.

It was coincidence that I used the new brass because it's been quite awhile since I have done so. But all the .243 brass that I own had already been prepped and primed with std. rifle primers and I wanted 40 of them with magnum primers.

I try to keep at least one bag of brand new brass laying around for each caliber just in case. Luckily I had 40 new pieces of Winchester brass. I don't normally do so, but in this case I weighed each piece and sorted them. The average weight was around 159 gr and 30 of them were within 0.8 gr of that average. There were 3 that were around 1.5 gr higher than the average and the lightest was only 1.0 gr lower than the average. I consider that pretty good for cheap brass.

Next I measured the case length. The "trim to" length is typically specified as 2.035". Of the 40 I measured here, all but 2 were either 2.033 or 2.034". @ of them measured 2.036" Still not too bad, certainly below the 2.045" max and pretty consistent.

At this point I was wondering if I could avoid all sizing and trim work completely. I measured the inside diameter. They were all 0.234" except for one that was .235". Normally for .243" bullets, my sizer will make the inside diameter about 0.239 or 0.238. But since I was going to use a boattail, I figured I could get away with it here. They all loaded up just fine. I noticed one piece where the neck had a slight dent in it, but the bullet started in and seated just fine.

I haven't shot these yet. That is the real test. But basically for consistency, I was very pleased by the brass. I believe the reports of the flawed brass. I have seen some brass where I would have to cull a few and size everything. But by and large, I think Winchester or any of the other major brands are actually very good. No substitute for doing your own inspection first though.

 

[grubbylabs]

Being new to reloading I have bought quite a bit of new win brass and have not had a bad one yet. Most of it has been 308 and 44 mag. But I will certainly look at the cases a little harder next time.

 

[jcvfdlurch]

Winchester customer service...

I am glad that a lot of people have had good luck with Winchester products. I however have even another mark for the negative list. I have been trying to get them to deal with the replacement of the 223 brass. I have now been told that this process will take at least 3-4 more weeks to resolve. I am not pleased with that in the slightest with it already taking almost a month to get to this point. Here is my new strike againt them. A freind showed up yesterday with a bag of Winchester 222 Rem. brass. New bag never opened. Out of 100 casings we found 7 with considerable neck damage. Two of those seven wouldnt even start into my RCBS FL die. We also had to trim 11 casing to get a fairly uniform start lenght. After chamfering inside of all necks and lubing we resized all casings to find 2 casings that split at neck when sized. I guess just another lesson learned. I have instructed all of my freinds to not bring me any more new Win brass to load. Maybe some people expect to spend entire day to prep 100 brass but I am not one of those people. Maybe 96 out of 100 is good odds for loadable brass. I feel that for the price we have to pay for components these are not exceptable odds. I have sent Winchester yet another email with this round.