well, i have tried several different ways to sort my brass. the typical weigh sorting, and also sorting by internal volume. both of which has not yielded any advantages (consistency) over the other. i was wondering if just running each round over the chrony and then segregating each fired round by the velocity is a better way to do it. your thoughts--for those of you that shoot out to over 600 yards regularly? thanks
how do you sort brass?
- Thread starter cmillard
- Start date
I sort brass by weight which is the same as by volume. It is understood that the weight (more or less) differential of brass is in the case wall thickness. I am assuming you do all your case prep first; debur the flash hole, trim the case for length, ream the primer pocked etc… Most shooters sort cases, but some shooters sort cartridges. I do both. I also sort case by primer and bullet seating pressure. But I think I’m getting a bit anal. 
No, not really. I just love reloading and more things I can do, the more fun it is.
I think it would be imposable to sort cases by velocity. The powder burn from shoot to shoot is to broad. It would probably take a lot to lot sampling to determine the consistency. Just by buying better brass will achieve a more consistent string of shoots.
No, not really. I just love reloading and more things I can do, the more fun it is.
I think it would be imposable to sort cases by velocity. The powder burn from shoot to shoot is to broad. It would probably take a lot to lot sampling to determine the consistency. Just by buying better brass will achieve a more consistent string of shoots.
You would need a very very good chrono to base tossing brass on.
If your fireformed case capacities are inconsistent, then that's what you have. Rake it in the trash, get another lot of better brass, or live with it. Nothing else to do there.
Sound crazy?
Well I cull brass first by thickness variance, which does more to reduce future runout than anything else.
Most of my brass is lost here.
Then I prep, fireform, & check capacities. I lose ~25% more here.
But the remaining cases will burn out many barrels, provided I take care of it (rational pressures, minimal sizing).
If your fireformed case capacities are inconsistent, then that's what you have. Rake it in the trash, get another lot of better brass, or live with it. Nothing else to do there.
Sound crazy?
Well I cull brass first by thickness variance, which does more to reduce future runout than anything else.
Most of my brass is lost here.
Then I prep, fireform, & check capacities. I lose ~25% more here.
But the remaining cases will burn out many barrels, provided I take care of it (rational pressures, minimal sizing).
Varmint shooter here, so I buy Lapua brass and just use it.
When I've made the mistake of buying Remington .204 brass I trimmed to length, then tossed all of them where the shine off the case mouth was crescent-shaped. I found these to be .012" on the thick side and .005" on the thin side.
Had to toss about 25% of these rem cases in a run of 500 bought in bulk from Midway.
When I've made the mistake of buying Remington .204 brass I trimmed to length, then tossed all of them where the shine off the case mouth was crescent-shaped. I found these to be .012" on the thick side and .005" on the thin side.
Had to toss about 25% of these rem cases in a run of 500 bought in bulk from Midway.
Cole, I check all my brass on the NECO/Audette tool. When I wrote the article here (http://riflemansjournal.blogspot.com/2009/07/reloading-audette-neco-case-checker.html ) I was just getting started with the tool. Since then, it's become a 100% can't be skipped step. I log all my scores and shoot one to thrr matches per week (depending on the season). Since beginning to use the Audette tool there has been a quantifiable improvement, especially in the .30-06 and .308 scores.
rcw3
Site $$ Sponsor
I cannot say I do this with all brass for all rifles, but I always like to work off things I can see or directly relate to target impact.
1. I weight sort brass then visually inspect the brass cases under 12x magnification - it's amazing the imperfections and defects in brass cases you can see with your eyes when the brass is under magnification - any case with anything suspect gets pitched to the scrap bin.
2. If I am going to be fussy on a batch of brass, I shoot the brass in a known good chamber and rifle and then full length re-size the fired brass with a known good re-size die, and then check the re-loaded rounds for runout (bullet to body of case) after the first firing, sizing and loading - and what I typically find is the rounds that are out will stay out - and they get set aside. Correspondingly, if after the first firing and re-loading the runout is very low, then the cases like that typically tend to stay low over the life of the case. So that is one tangible way I sort. You can also do this after two firings if that suits you more but I found things typically show up right away.
3. If in practice shooting I get a flyer with a round, and it shoots off call with a known consistent accurate load, that brass is suspect, and if I am going to be real fussy on selecting a batch of "match brass" I set it aside and don't use it in my "match brass" lineup. In truth, there are some brass cases you can do anything and everything you can think of to them and you'll never know why they are just no good (just like there are barrels that look and measure great everywhere but shoot poorly, and bad actions that no one can figure out why they don't do well - it happens). Err on the side of assuming it's bad - and maybe you will never know if it is or not but there's no "benefit of the doubt" here - it's "guilty until proven innocent" all the way here.
4. If I neck turn brass and the brass starts out with a heavy cut on one side of the neck and a light cut on the other side, or if it has a big hump in one spot on the neck, my assumption is that probably goes all the way down into the body of the case and those cases get relegated to "seconds". If the cut on the neck is smooth and consistent all the way around the neck, then my assumption is the brass in the rest of the case is probably more consistent as well and those cases will be in the batch for "match brass".
In my opinion (for whatever that's worth or not) you cannot go into "match brass" sorting with the miserly mentality many of us seem to have toward brass (i.e. "I paid good money for this brass and I'm not going to see it go to waste"). If you are a person who looks or goes through the brass bucket at the range - you are probably going to have to re-train yourself some to do good "match brass" sorting. If anything, you have to assume, when you buy that batch of 100 cases for $75 (or whatever) that you are going to have to pitch a whole lot of them and start from the assumption that anything unusual you see is cause to reject a brass case and that you will err on the side of pitching it.
Robert Whitley
1. I weight sort brass then visually inspect the brass cases under 12x magnification - it's amazing the imperfections and defects in brass cases you can see with your eyes when the brass is under magnification - any case with anything suspect gets pitched to the scrap bin.
2. If I am going to be fussy on a batch of brass, I shoot the brass in a known good chamber and rifle and then full length re-size the fired brass with a known good re-size die, and then check the re-loaded rounds for runout (bullet to body of case) after the first firing, sizing and loading - and what I typically find is the rounds that are out will stay out - and they get set aside. Correspondingly, if after the first firing and re-loading the runout is very low, then the cases like that typically tend to stay low over the life of the case. So that is one tangible way I sort. You can also do this after two firings if that suits you more but I found things typically show up right away.
3. If in practice shooting I get a flyer with a round, and it shoots off call with a known consistent accurate load, that brass is suspect, and if I am going to be real fussy on selecting a batch of "match brass" I set it aside and don't use it in my "match brass" lineup. In truth, there are some brass cases you can do anything and everything you can think of to them and you'll never know why they are just no good (just like there are barrels that look and measure great everywhere but shoot poorly, and bad actions that no one can figure out why they don't do well - it happens). Err on the side of assuming it's bad - and maybe you will never know if it is or not but there's no "benefit of the doubt" here - it's "guilty until proven innocent" all the way here.
4. If I neck turn brass and the brass starts out with a heavy cut on one side of the neck and a light cut on the other side, or if it has a big hump in one spot on the neck, my assumption is that probably goes all the way down into the body of the case and those cases get relegated to "seconds". If the cut on the neck is smooth and consistent all the way around the neck, then my assumption is the brass in the rest of the case is probably more consistent as well and those cases will be in the batch for "match brass".
In my opinion (for whatever that's worth or not) you cannot go into "match brass" sorting with the miserly mentality many of us seem to have toward brass (i.e. "I paid good money for this brass and I'm not going to see it go to waste"). If you are a person who looks or goes through the brass bucket at the range - you are probably going to have to re-train yourself some to do good "match brass" sorting. If anything, you have to assume, when you buy that batch of 100 cases for $75 (or whatever) that you are going to have to pitch a whole lot of them and start from the assumption that anything unusual you see is cause to reject a brass case and that you will err on the side of pitching it.
Robert Whitley
jghoghunter
Gold $$ Contributor
I do some sorting also. I guess my question is. How has all the sorting helped your scores? German the only one that has said about how it helps.
Cole, unfortunately, the outside concentricity of neck to body is not the same thing. In extreme cases it can be affected, but it's something else.
Case wall thickness variance matters because the case will bend under pressure and cause the barrel to vibrate differently. In essence, the case bends like a banana with the thin side becoming the long side because it stretched more easily. Since we're not going to find a set of cases with zero variance, what we're really after is indexing the cases so that the thin spot is lined up with a locking lug (I put them in at 12:00). The support of the lug, versus the unsupported side of the bolt keeps random vibration to a minimum and in any event all the shots are (hopefully) causing vibration in the same plane.
Creighton Audette wrote a great piece on this, unfortunately I can't attach to this post (it's a big file). I followed his testing and was able to duplicate his results, if the thin spot is on the side, the shot will go out to the side. By orienting the thin spots all the same (12:00) the shots were more centered up and more on-call. That has brought up my X-count and reduced the number of unaccountable 9's.
My last two 500 yard prone matches (all irons) with the .308 were 600-42X and 600-41X and I'm getting close to that with the .30-06. Not all the credit can go to indexed cases, of course, but before I started that process, it was hard to get over 32X to 34X, now I generally expect to be over that. The more X's there are, the further away you are from that darn 9 ring! Case checking and indexing is a useful method for minimizing sources of error, not a great leap forward in accuracy. But each little (productive) thing counts.
Case wall thickness variance matters because the case will bend under pressure and cause the barrel to vibrate differently. In essence, the case bends like a banana with the thin side becoming the long side because it stretched more easily. Since we're not going to find a set of cases with zero variance, what we're really after is indexing the cases so that the thin spot is lined up with a locking lug (I put them in at 12:00). The support of the lug, versus the unsupported side of the bolt keeps random vibration to a minimum and in any event all the shots are (hopefully) causing vibration in the same plane.
Creighton Audette wrote a great piece on this, unfortunately I can't attach to this post (it's a big file). I followed his testing and was able to duplicate his results, if the thin spot is on the side, the shot will go out to the side. By orienting the thin spots all the same (12:00) the shots were more centered up and more on-call. That has brought up my X-count and reduced the number of unaccountable 9's.
My last two 500 yard prone matches (all irons) with the .308 were 600-42X and 600-41X and I'm getting close to that with the .30-06. Not all the credit can go to indexed cases, of course, but before I started that process, it was hard to get over 32X to 34X, now I generally expect to be over that. The more X's there are, the further away you are from that darn 9 ring! Case checking and indexing is a useful method for minimizing sources of error, not a great leap forward in accuracy. But each little (productive) thing counts.
I should add that all of what I described above is far less important with 6BR brass which I realize is the intent of this thread. The shorter a case is, the less likely that it will develop a thin/thick side during the drawing process. And to the extent that it does, the short case tends to have less of the banana curve (just due to length) and therefore less effect on barrel vibrations.
I don't do the case sorting with 6BR brass anymore as I wasn't able to see a change. Also, a three-lug or four-lug action supports the case head more completely and there is accordingly, less of an effect (really none) from case bending.
I don't do the case sorting with 6BR brass anymore as I wasn't able to see a change. Also, a three-lug or four-lug action supports the case head more completely and there is accordingly, less of an effect (really none) from case bending.
For what it's worth I have recently gone to the Jack Neary ppc method of sorting my BR brass, which is to say by brand and by brand only. I have seen no decrease in accuracy. I like Norma brass for the 6BR Norma and Lapua for the 22 and 30 BR, though Lapua's recent change in neck wall thickness may influence future purchases of brass I intend to use for the 30 BR.
Upgrades & Donations
This Forum's expenses are primarily paid by member contributions. You can upgrade your Forum membership in seconds. Gold and Silver members get unlimited FREE classifieds for one year. Gold members can upload custom avatars.
Click Upgrade Membership Button ABOVE to get Gold or Silver Status.
You can also donate any amount, large or small, with the button below. Include your Forum Name in the PayPal Notes field.
To DONATE by CHECK, or make a recurring donation, CLICK HERE to learn how.
Click Upgrade Membership Button ABOVE to get Gold or Silver Status.
You can also donate any amount, large or small, with the button below. Include your Forum Name in the PayPal Notes field.
To DONATE by CHECK, or make a recurring donation, CLICK HERE to learn how.