260 AI brass

[Rock Knocker]

Ok, my searches have been pretty iffy on this. Of course i would love to just get some new 260 lapua brass but from the sounds of this, it may take a while to find. SO what would be the best from me to fireform with??? 7mm 08? .243? etc...

Im want to keep it cheap. I dont want to have to buy all sorts of extra gadgets to form the cases when i will be able to buy the brass in a couple months.

Thanks for the help

 

[HillbillySniper]

A buddy of mine just bought 50 pieces of sorted Nosler 260 rem brass for around 48 dollars and the brass looks great.


Hillbilly

 

[savageboy]

Ive done it for my 260AI two ways. Rem. 260 Brass- just fireform it (either Cream of Wheat method or w/ bullet jammed) and I have used Lapua.308 necked down.
My general observations are: Rem is less consistant weight, primer pockets wear out faster- like in several reloads, but it holds more powder than the Lapua so my velocities are a little higher. Lapua- much more consistant in weight, not sure on primer pocket life yet as I havenet shot it alot. A bit more work and the .308 brass ends you up with a short .260AI neck. Ok by me as I won't have to trim it- ever as the Ackleys don't really grow the brass much and its on the short end to start with.
I have always wanted to try Win 7-08 brass. But I have more than enough now. It seems like a good compromise.

 

[Elkbane]

For a cheap solution, I'd use Win 7mm-08 brass , neck it down and just shoot it. It should have more consistent weights than Remington, and the neck wall thickness should be a little more uniform. You'll also avoid having short necks that way too. One bad thing about really short necks is that you can accumulate carbon in the leade of you chamber than be really stubborn to remove. They make cases a specific length for a reason......
Elkbane

 

[15Tango]

I made a bunch of 6.5 Creedmoor from Remington .243 and 7MM-08. After neck turning, hacking off all that extra neck length, uniforming the pockets and cutting flash holes and doing around 100 each I weighed them. I was surprised to see the weight variation was less than 2 grains. This was range pick-up brass from many different people and intended for varminting/hunting brass I wouldn't have to worry about losing. With all those different lots and amount of machining the stuff I was impressed with the weight variation.

There's nothing wrong with Remington - it's certainly not Lapua but you know that.

Wayne

 

[Kenny474]

You could go with the 7-08 Win brass as has been suggested, or you could go with Lapua .243 brass and neck it up with a tapered expander.

For a very low cost expander that works extremely well, you can simply take a Lee universal de-capping die, which is under $10 and replace the decapping stem with an expander/depriming rod from a .260 Lee die (replacement expander's cost $3) and you have a very low cost expander that works excellently and doesn't hurt concentricity (at least no in my experience).

For less than $20 you have an excellent expander set-up. You can also add a .25 caliber expander and go from .243 to .264 in 2 steps instead of one, which will help to keep the necks concentric to the case body. I figured this out a few months ago and have been using this instead of my K&M Expand Iron ever since. And different size expanders are very cheap at $3 a pop.
And if you want a custom size, just buy the next size up and chuck it in a drill and carefully turn it down to the desired size with a piece of emery cloth. If you are careful, you can get very good results this way.

This will allow you to use Lapua brass at very little additional cost, and an expander die is always a good thing to have at the reloading bench, as is a decapping die, and you will now have both.

Link to Lee die:
http://www.midsouthshooterssupply.com/item.asp?sku=0000690292
Link to Lee .260 decapping stem:
http://www.leeprecision.com/cgi/catalog/parts.cgi?1294410397.458=90298
Picture of Lee Easy Xpander:
http://www.leeprecision.com/graphics/parts/2425.jpg

Kenny

 

[Rock Knocker]

I like the 7mm-08 because its simple. But i like the expander and 243 lapua idea, so i could have lapua brass.

I will have to think about it. starting out with some cheaper 7mm-08 brass doesnt sound that bad while going through my barrel break in anyways.

If only Lapua carried 7mm-08