An Experiment...Sorting LC Brass By Year

[yukonal]

I have a pile of Lake City brass. Some new, some range pick up. After someone here recently posted that you should sort LC brass by year lots for competition, I decided to look into it a little deeper.

I took several from each year lot, and sized them, punching the primers. Here are the average case weights I came up with. You can draw your own conclusions.

2005---92.3gr
2006---92.4gr
2007---92.4gr
2008---92.8gr
2009---92.3gr
2010---91.88gr (I ran into one that weighed 90.7, thus the lighter avg.)
2011---92.6gr
2012---92.3gr

As far as I'm concerned, they can all be thrown together and loaded in the same batch. With so many people nowadays saying neck tension is SO much more important than case weight (within reason), I feel comfortable not having to sort these by year. I'd say I'm good to go...

 

[Shynloco]

I AGREE! Looks like you are good to go. In fact, I just picked up 50 LC Match casing for my .308 (from a friend) to test with. When I say test, I am interesting in comparing these three manufacturer casings to see if one performs better in my particular Benchrest Rifle. IMHO, the weight spread given in the previous post, is AT LEAST as good as what I'm currently seeing from Lapua or Norma, which are excellent brass' to use. I can absolutely say that the last time I saw LC Match brass (1983,) that was some really good stuff and the year markings on the brass I just got matches those years. I'm looking forward to seeing how well that brass from 20 years ago performs in a modern day rifle.

Alex

 

[kelbro]

LC manufacturing changed facilities right around that time (2005).

Previous datecodes were not as consistent.