Culling Remington brass

[rstreich]

I'm kind'a stuck with buying some Remington brass for a factory .17 Rem that I want to get shooting this spring. So, other than the visible defects, what do you guys do when culling this brass? Is it enough to weigh it or should I be checking neck wall concentricity as well? Anything else I should check?

 

[CPorter]

I bought 500 Remington cases. To sort it I measured the weight and had it all segregated by weight on a large sheet of graph paper. Just for the hell of it I entered the weight into Excel to find the mean and standard deviation. I then placed all the brass in groups of one standard deviation such that I got the largest groups of brass. The cases that were several STDs out from the mean were culled.

 

[Forum Boss]

The biggest difference I noticed in Remington-headstamp Rem 260 brass was neck thickness. It was all over the map. That stuff could really have benefited from turning. I sorted by thickness, but some cases would be thin on one side of the neck and thick on the other, so then what do you do?

 

[vlcakc]

Usually use Remington brass for my pd rifles where I'll need hundreds of cases. Last year I bought an MGM Contender barrel in .17 Mach IV that was supposed to have a no-turn chamber. Used necked down .221 Remington brass. After a couple of blown primers, some careful measurements showed that the loaded neck diameter of my lot of brass was about .002 to .003" too large for my chamber. Called MGM and they offered to recut the neck. Decided to neck-turn the brass instead. Took a light cleanup cut that touched about a half to two thirds of the neck diameter. Solved the problem. Didn't bother to sort by weight. Rifle now shoots in the "fours" fireforming and in the high "threes" with formed cases. Remington brass is obviously not in the same quality class as Lapua or Norma, but can do a very creditable job in the field with a little work. I prefer it to my Winchester and Federal brass.

 

[garyw]

RE,REM 17 BRASS.
im just waiting for my tikka to be rebarreled wth a LILJA tube
while im pacing up and down driving everyone nuts i thought about sorting 200 pieces of rem brass. in the past all i did was weigh 10 take the average weight.weigh every thing and cull all out by 5%.this worked very well as i didnt want to spend time worrying about loaded brass.NOW THOUGH with the new barrel being chambered with minimum neck clearance will i gain by more precise sorting and clean up the necks i dont neck turn now so would have to buy the gear will it be worth it??????.
thanks for any input

 

[Silverfox]

rstreich-- The quality of new .17 Remington brass I have purchased in the last 2 years has been ROTTEN!!! The case neck wall thickness is all over the place. Some were .0130" thick on one side and as little as .0090" thick on the other side.

I have a super match grade Pac-Nor barrel with a .1945" neck. I needed to wind up with a case neck wall thickness of between .00985" to .0099". That way, the OD of the necks of my loaded rounds would be approximately .1915" to .1920". Out of the first 100 brand new .17 Remington casings I measured neck wall thickness on, I found only one casing that had casing neck walls thick enough to give me a uniform neck wall thickness of .00985" to .0099"!!!

I contacted Remington to apprise them of my findings and they told me, in so many words, to "GO FISH!" They said my measurements were well within their tolerance levels for quality!!!

Have you thought about forming .17 Remington brass out of .204 Ruger brass? It is extra work, but I think you'll wind up with WAAAAY better quality brass than the Remington junk. Find the brand of .204 Ruger brass you think is up to your standards and start forming them down to .17 Remington.

The WW .204 Ruger casings I have necked down to .17 Remington wind up measuring .198" OD with the bullet seated in them. That should work just great in my Lilja barreled .17 Remington that has a chamber with a neck that is about .201" to .202" in diameter. For forming the .204 Ruger brass to .17 Remington, my first step is to use a Redding .17 Remington Form Die #1 and run the casing up into that. My second step is to run the casings up into a Redding .17 Remington Trim Die. The third step is to trim the brass to between 1.810 and 1.815" in length. The fourth step is to run the brass up into my Forster .17 Remington Full Length Die. Last, I trim the casings to a uniform length.

I'm sure I could use my K&M neck turner and make even better brass, but I haven't gone that route yet.

 

[Archermike]

I just received 100 rounds of Lapua .223 brass and 100 rounds of Remington 22-250 brass. I wished I would have order all Lapua now. The Remington brass is in bad shape,for "new" brass)

As for the .223 Lapua it looks great, I have not started weighting it out yet. As this is my first order of Lapua brass can someone tell me why it's a silver color of about 1/3 of the top of the case. Looks like the neck has been heated up in the neck area.

Archermike

 

[rstreich]

rstreich-- The quality of new .17 Remington brass I have purchased in the last 2 years has been ROTTEN!!! The case neck wall thickness is all over the place. Some were .0130" thick on one side and as little as .0090" thick on the other side. ...

Have you thought about forming .17 Remington brass out of .204 Ruger brass? It is extra work, but I think you'll wind up with WAAAAY better quality brass than the Remington junk. Find the brand of .204 Ruger brass you think is up to your standards and start forming them down to .17 Remington....

So far I've gotten into this .17 Rem venture fairly cheaply: a stock Sako 75 Varmint that I got for a good price, a set of used Wilson dies, and some of this overpriced Remington brass. The anvil on my tubing mic won't fit in the neck of the .17 brass so I can't check the consistency on the necks, but weight distribution seemed okay,can't remember the numbers, but it was about what I've seen with Win .204 brass). I guess I'll have to bump a new tubing mic higher up the priority list 'cause if I'd seen neck variations like you describe, I'd have trashed the whole idea. For now, I'll remain blissfully ignorant.

At this point, my plan is pretty simple, if I can get the gun to shoot decently with a minimum of fuss, I'll keep it and shoot it. If not, I'll either sell it or I'll put a new barrel on it and chamber it to some variant of a .223 necked down to .17. I thought about doing exactly what you recommended, but decided that I'd rather invest the money in a cartridge that I could make from Lapua or RWS brass.