Lapua 6.5x284 Brass Weight Sort

[Mark Walker in TX]

I recently bought 4 boxes of Lapua 6.5x284 brass for an upcoming project. It arrived as two boxes each of two different lots.

I prepped it all as I normally do, including trimming to length, then went to weight sort it. What I found was surprising and disappointing to say the least. The first two hundred cases,one lot) were great, weighing between 194.5 and 196.5 grains. When split up back into lots of 100 there is a less than 1g difference per 100 - works for me.

It was when I started into the next two hundred,second lot)that it got a bit ugly. The spread of them went from 193.8 to 198.6 for the two hundred cases, or damn near 5 grains in total. There are 150 of this two hundred that fall into a two grain spread, but 40 are so far out the top that they just will not work.

IMO, this stuff is just too expensive for this poor of quality control. I sent Lapua an email to let them know about this.

I would strongly advise anyone purchasing any of this to weight it out, just to be sure of what you are getting...

Here is the picture of the first 200:

Here is a pic of all 400, note the spread on the right set:

 

[6BR]

WOW!!!!! I never thought I would see the day when this would happen. Your right too, we pay a lot because we expect to get excellent quality. But when the quality starts to fad, way to expensive. I think what's going on is Lapua is getting so many orders, the quality control may be falterings a bit. I hope this does not start to become a problem with Lapua. I just had a 6BR built and had the chamber fitted for 6BR Lapua brass with a .272 neck. So, I hope they don't start screwing that up. Anyhow, I hope this is just a one time thing.

 

[Dirtball]

Just to make life easier on the rest of us, what were the two lot numbers?
Thanks
Dave

 

[JHardy]

Texas:

In another thread re case sorting, I mentioned just the type of problem you are going through, i.e., with the price of premium brass it is very difficult to sort to .1 unless you have a very large sample because a given lot can vary as much as 5.0 grains. Well, you have been thoughtful enough to picture the real world problem. It is unacceptable, and I hope Lapua makes it right for you -- which will also benefit the rest of us.

As you already know, the wide range of case wts. is likely to show up in neck thickness which can cause real problems with consistent neck tension. But, with neck turning you can make them "brother up" exactly the same at the point that makes the most difference -- the neck. Perfect necks tend to yield low ES which assists in less vertical at 1000 yards, and that is the name of the game.

Additionally, in my testing over the years with the 6.5x284 parent case as well as the 300 Norma WSM, H4350 and H4831SC are more "forgiving" when you have a wide variation in case wts. Also, an increase in neck tension from the "standard" .002 to .003 or .004 will often bring the ES way down to sub 5 fps. A good annealing program will also give you benefits over the long run.

I learned these "cures" a long time back while shooting a 338 Lapua improved in the HG class at Hawks Ridge as did others shooting the 8x68 RWS based chamberings where the brass wt. spread was always around 5.0 grains per box of 100.

As you have stated, this variation is not what you paid for and not what you need. But, your case prep will help tremendously. I sure hope Lapua does the right thing and replaces your brass. Please let us know.

BTW, the lot number on the "bad" lot of brass would give all of us a heads up.

Good luck and thanks for bringing this to everyone's attention.

Jim Hardy

 

[Mark Walker in TX]

Today's update:

I received an email promptly from Don with Kaltron,the Lapua importer) and he asked that we talk. He did say that he felt the variance was unacceptable, and he did offer to replace the cases. Unfortunately they are currently out of stock, and it will have to wait until they receive the next shipment from Finland.

RE the lots, I put the cases into my MTM boxes right out of the mfg boxes, and I did this several days apart. Like a dummy, I did not keep the lot#s for the first 200 cases, which turned out to be the bad cases. I did keep the lot# for the good cases, and they are lot P00378002.

 

[Roarke]

This thread inspired two questions:

1: Is everyone in agreement that JHardy is correct in his statement that turning the case necks essentially eliminates the effects of case weight variance?

2: How many times can I expect to be able to reload a 6.5 284 Lapua case? I'm primarily neck sizing with a Redding neck bushing die and have yet to shoot more than 100 rounds through my rifle -so I'm just about to load the cases for the second time.

I'm a newbie to benchrest and reloading so bear with me.. thanks

 

[JHardy]

Roarke:

Turning the case necks -- along with other BR neck prep -- does not "eliminate" ES problems from variations in internal case capacity in lots of brass with large spreads like the 5.0 grains experienced by the original poster.

If you are in this bad position,5.0 grain spread), quality neck prep will assist in lowering the ES and vertical at long range as opposed to shooting such brass in a "no-turn" configuration, all else being the same.

The concept of "perfect" necks is not my original idea. The concept was championed and subjected to detailed testing by the late T.J. Jackson with the 6BR. Basically, he concluded that you could get away with just about anything if you had "perfect" necks.

Everything I do in precision loading for 600 to 1000 yard competition surrounds my attempts to get the ES down to single digits with hopes that it will give me waterline vertical at the target. If you can't control your vertical, the game is over before it begins. IMHO, "perfect" necks give you the best chance to establish the best primer, powder, bullet combo for your competition load -- with brass wt. spreads from .1 to 5.0 grains.

The reasons to search for low ES and waterline vertical is actually very fundamental. Whether you shoot 1000 BR or long range NRA prone and Palma, the high value circles "shoot" larger through the center and "shoot" smaller if you have up and down vertical displacement of your shots at the target. Example: if you break a center X shot, and you have a 9 on the line at 3:00 during a 10 mph full value wind from 9:00, you can adjust for that. If you break a center X shot and you have a high 9 at 12:00,or low at 6:00) in the same conditions, what are you going to do now? What caused that? Where did that come from? All sorts of "stuff" can happen on a 1000 yard range with berms at 600, 800, and 900 yards -- but you probably lost that high or low shot at the loading bench.

I hope this helps a little. You better believe that opinions will vary.

Favor center,
Jim

 

[243Mendoza]

...
Everything I do in precision loading for 600 to 1000 yard competition surrounds my attempts to get the ES down to single digits with hopes that it will give me waterline vertical at the target. ...
Jim

Does low ES give you smaller groups? This may be true for benchrest where you have more rifle control but not for NRA prone. I've found this not to be true,low ES=small groups) even at 600yds where I've shot dozens of 20-shot groups through a chronograph. Don't know about 1000yd since I do not have ready access to a 1000yd range. BTW, is ES a valid statistical number? Can you determine a population ES from a sample? I don't know and I wonder if there is anyone on this forum with statistical training that can answer? I suspect that a more valid statistic is the average muzzle velocity.

 

[JHardy]

Steve:

I shoot 600 to 1000 yr prone matches. Respectfully, to say that low ES does not matter in NRA prone is to say that vertical does not matter. You don't need a stat person to figure that out. In all long range shooting I have done -- BR and prone -- if I eliminate the vertical then I have great accuracy. You can't even make a good wind call unless your rifle and load are telling you the "truth" on each shot. High or low shots on X ring breaks would do nothing for my confidence in my rifle and load combo.

If you believe that low ES matters in BR and not the prone game, then are you saying that your scores will be just as good with a 30 ES for example as your scores with a 3 ES because your position is not refined enough to shoot the difference? Not in my experience, i.e. if you have 7" of vertical built into your loads because you did not do your job at the loading bench,and load development) and you point and break a shot in the middle of the 10 ring, do you have a 10 or a 9,or even an 8)? Would a top F-Class shooter settle for that? Why would I not want my ammo for prone to be as good as an F-Class competitor? I don't want to give up even a single point or a single X because my ammo could not get it done.

In all the 600 and 1000 yd prone matches I have shot this year,not really too many), to the best of my memory and per my shooting log, I have lost no points to vertical that I did not point. I probably lost a few Xs in a match in October with 25 mph winds that came over a set of trees to give me low shots -- but they did not take me out of the 10 ring and I was afraid to adjust for fear of shooting an 8 or 9 out the top if I made a mistake. I won that match. I have lost plenty of points to poor wind calls and/or poor game planning or I have just plain pointed bad shots.

I will tell you that there are plenty of great prone shooters out there who will tell you that NOTHING matters in long range prone but the Indian -- I mean NOTHING. I don't happen to share that view.

I will submit that there are many who share your view. As for me, I load better than I shoot, and I just never go to the line without great ammo that gives me single digit ES and waterline vertical -- NEVER. But, that is just me.

Steve, thanks for your reply from the other side of the issue. It is all good food for thought.

Regards,
Jim

Edit: When I talk about single digit ES, I am saying that all of my testing with that load combo has NO shots outside of the single digit range. SD may be a better number for many, but SD might reflect an ES of 9 on one shot and 20 on another. I don't want that 20 ES round in my competition box. I don't want "SD average" rounds printing on my target at 1000 yards if those rounds cost me points or Xs.

 

[rcw3]

Maybe I am missing something here, but whenever I shoot a match, I get sighters first and then shoot 20 round record strings. I don't know any long range shooting discipline that requires one to shoot more than 20 record shots in a row so what's the big deal with a 5 grain weight variation over 200 or so cases when you can segregate your brass into weighed batches for match shooting?

Even for a big long shooting weekend I have usually only seen maybe 1000 pt aggregate,100 record rounds). Based on even the bad batch of cases, it looks like you can get batches for match shooting with the cases in the batch very close to each other, and batch to batch close enough to get 100 record rounds plus sighters very close to one another,probably close enough so that you might only need to click up or down one quarter minute click to keep a 1000 yard zero dead in the center).

I am not justifying that the weight variation of the one lot of Lapua brass should be necessarily considered satisfactory, but I don't understand the need to have 200+ cases all weighing in within very tight weight tolerances either.

Robert Whitley

 

[JHardy]

Robert:

I have shot my 284 Shehane for 1826 rounds,Gilkes-Ross action) with the same 200 cases I started with. I just took 10 minutes to sort them into two groups of 100 to fit in two ammo boxes. I did my usual case prep and that was it.

I happen to have a large lot of 2500 6.5x284 Lapua that I will sort into lots that vary as little as possible because the large number of cases will allow me to so so. I will simply do it because I want to do it and because the opportunity is there -- nothing more. I have only sorted and preped 200 for my new 284 Shehane barrel on my Barnard prone gun which will last the life of that barrel. Then I will toss the brass and march on to another sorted 200.

I think we are saying the same thing. At least, I don't disagree with your position. But, if I were to sell you a couple of hundred rounds of my 6.5x.284 Lapua brass out of the large lot, I bet you would rather have 200 that were dead nuts to .1 in spread verses me selling you the the high and low culls out of the 2500 -- because it hurts nothing and you are not the one who had to sort the brass! Just my SWAG

On another note, how is your 284 testing coming along with RL-17? I have gotten one very fine prone score,200-18X)druing a club 600 yd prone match I used for testing, but I have not tested RL-17 at 1000. What say you counselor?

Jim

 

[criver600]

Case weight is the least of my worries...... Anything we can weigh or measure we tend to worry about.
I prefer to have loads in the middle of wide window where you can be off a tenth or two and see little to no difference in velocity.

 

[JHardy]

Greg:

I agree ... case wt. is the least of my loading worries as well. However, I still do a lot of case prep just like I did at Hawks Ridge. Your BR and prone skills exceed mine with any ammo, and that is just a fact.

We both know of the Hawks Ridge shooter who, after a little too much aiming fluid, pulled some hot rounds with his teath, tossed a little powder out, and hammered the 210s back in the 300 Ackley brass with a TV remote box -- only to win the monthly championship. I "ain't" that good or that lucky.

Jim

 

[243Mendoza]

..Respectfully, to say that low ES does not matter in NRA prone is to say that vertical does not matter. You don't need a stat person to figure that out. In all long range shooting I have done -- BR and prone -- if I eliminate the vertical then I have great accuracy. You can't even make a good wind call unless your rifle and load are telling you the "truth" on each shot.

I do not question the importance of small group size but I question the relation between ES and vertical. There are other contributors to vertical group size, e.g. barrel vibration for instance. How many shots do you use in measuring ES? Is that number enough? If you shoot more shots, does the ES asymptote to a constant value? I suspect not. People who do quality control don't use ES, they use SD or sigma. If you want to ensure high quality then use a large value of sigma, e.g. 6 sigma.

 

[LongRanger]

E.S. Extreme Spread. The difference between the fastest and slowest bullets in a shot string of any size.

Thanks to gravity the relationship between ES and vertical is absolute.

Simple example of an ES of 10:

All else being equal, a 6.5 140 grain VLD starting at 3000 fps will, at 1000y, drop 2" less than the same bullet at 2990 fps.,Using Sierra Infinity Suite, bullet drops are 288" and 290", respectively).

Doesn't leave much room for shooter error on a 1000y F Class X ring. That's why we strive for a single digit ES.

Frank

 

[JHardy]

Steve:

If you can't relate ES to vertical, I really don't know what to say. If you like SD better I understand as that is the standard. But, tell me how you get a bad SD when all of your test shots are single digit ES? The following is why I like to think in terms of ES:

In a 60 shot prone match, for example, you actually shoot 60 individual matches -- one shot at a time. I want each shot to have low ES one shot at a time. If each shot is in the 10 or X ring you have a 600 with a high X count. That is what you want for championships and records.

A good SD is a great measurement for the batch, and I agree with you on that, but it MAY not be representative of EACH INDIVIDUAL SHOT. Remember that an "average" value MAY mean that you are as close to the bottom as you are to the top on individual shots within the SD. I am not looking for a good average on each shot. I am looking for an exact performance on each shot -- low ES and waterline vertical.

I would rather look at the ES of each shot rather than the SD for the same reason that I would rather shoot two 9s than one 8. It is just how I approach a match -- one shot at a time with each loaded round being capable of shooting a center X on each break. If you can out shoot your ammo, you will NEVER reach your full potential.

Try this simple test: Throw a rock hard and toss one softly at the same target at a given distance. The speed difference is ES. If you don't think the rocks thrown with a higher ES spread will have a different trajectory and a different vertical displacememt on the target than those thrown with a lower ES -- wow!

If you are trying out for the United States Palma Team, I think you will find that the shooters are judged to a great degree on their ability to shoot waterline vertical shots. The coaches take the hit on the wind calls. That being so, I would not want to leave waterline vertical at the loading bench.

To each his own,
Jim

 

[Mark Walker in TX]

Maybe I am missing something here, but whenever I shoot a match, I get sighters first and then shoot 20 round record strings. I don't know any long range shooting discipline that requires one to shoot more than 20 record shots in a row so what's the big deal with a 5 grain weight variation over 200 or so cases when you can segregate your brass into weighed batches for match shooting?

Even for a big long shooting weekend I have usually only seen maybe 1000 pt aggregate,100 record rounds). Based on even the bad batch of cases, it looks like you can get batches for match shooting with the cases in the batch very close to each other, and batch to batch close enough to get 100 record rounds plus sighters very close to one another,probably close enough so that you might only need to click up or down one quarter minute click to keep a 1000 yard zero dead in the center).

I am not justifying that the weight variation of the one lot of Lapua brass should be necessarily considered satisfactory, but I don't understand the need to have 200+ cases all weighing in within very tight weight tolerances either.

Robert Whitley

Robert,

My issue is case management or maybe case logistics. During the SOA or F-Class Nationals, one might shoot close to 500 shots between practice, sighters & records, and to me, having 20 lots of 25 cases would be horribly inefficient, basically unmanageable. As the course of fire and yardages change, some are 2+15 and others are unlimited+20, you would have to plan for that perfectly, or have to have all lots of 25-30 to cover the unl+20 strings, so you would wind up with a bunch of loaded rounds unfired, etc. Further, if you lost a couple of cases for any reason, your lot would then be unusable. Tumbling 20 lots separately when finished also in unappealing, at least to me. This being because I want, and think it should be reasonable, to weigh the cases once, sort them accordingly, then not have to deal with that again over their life.

Using the spread I got, not even the last 20 cases would form an acceptable lot, so they would just be excluded all together, and at darn near $1 a piece, I can't afford to to just write off 20 cases, $20, or 20% of each box.

The last time I ordered a large lot of Lapua brass it was 500 6.5x47 cases. When I did this, all 500 cases went into a less than 2g spread, and so it would up about a .4g difference per sorted box. I would have been very happy if that had been the case here.

Honestly, when I took the picture of the first 200 cases, it was to get here on the site and brag about how damn good Lapua brass was. It didn't turn out quite like I thought....

I would like to hear more about your .284/RE-17 combo experience as well, as this brass is destined for a .284 project I am just getting started on.

 

[memilanuk]

walker,

I'll chime in that the batch of Lapua 6.5-284 I got last winter is definitely sub-par - weights all over the place, and far more variation in neck thickness than I'm used to seeing in say, Lapua .308 Win brass - upwards of 2 thou max to min,~0.013-0.015).

For that matter, the batch of Lapua .308 Win brass I got *this* year is no where near the same quality as the stuff I got *last* year... wider weight spread, and more variation in neck thickness. The latter can be dealt with somewhat by neck turning, but it still makes a person wonder about thick-n-thin spots down the case wall...

I used to get wrapped around the axle about case weight... in some people's eyes I still do, I guess. When I get a large batch,600-900pcs) I weigh them out by 0.1gr, like others here mentioned. Then I keep it simple from there on - the first 100 go in the first box, the next 100 go in the next box, and so on. Last year I used 50 rd boxes; this year because of logistics I went with 100rd. Yes, the boxes at the 'ends' end up with a bit more spread... sometimes 0.5-0.6gr, maybe more if you take into account the one or two cases making up the extreme 'tails'. I try to use those boxes for shorter range events, sighters, blow-off rounds, whatever. I try to conserve the ones that are 100rds of all one 0.1gr increment i.e. 172.5gr-172.5gr or 172.5gr-172.6gr in for the 1000yd line, or perhaps for the team matches.

I'm too miserly to just throw cases away because they don't happen to meet a particular standard; I can *always* find a use for 'em.

YMMV,

Monte

 

[criver600]

Jim, Mark, All:

About 7 years ago I thought I was a pretty decent prone shooter and showed up at Hawks Ridge with my best prone rifle....... Toughest range, Toughest competitors I have ever seen. Those guys are good. Finally built my first Benchrest rifle and got down to getting it tuned.
All I can say is ladder test.... Say a 1% increase is giving you around 35 fps. Its almost boring but your velocity, ES & SD are not what you want to see. 1% increase, 1% increase and......... hey you only got 5 fps and your ES & SD are really good. 1% increase 4 fps ES & SD are great. Couple more times velocity jumps 50 fps and hmmm bolt feels tight. On a 300 Ackly I have had a 2-12 grain window where you picked up 30 fps.......... with fantastic numbers. I like to be in the middle of that. I can screw up two or thee tenths either way and still have good numbers. Now get your seating depth figured out and its off to the races.
I have good scales I have weighed/prepped brass, weighed/bullets done everything I could think of to compete. But it comes back to a flexable wide window on the TUNE. And most of the time I still get beat.........

 

[deepwater]

I am just an observer to this discussion.
I was wondering if this forum would be a place where a group of "x" individuals, after purchasing and then sorting the brass, could then redistribute it among themselves according to similar specs. All participants, in theory, would end up with larger lots of similar brass. Even if shipping charges between members ended up being $50 - $100 more per 500 pieces, may save a lot of time and improve accuracy for all.

deepwater.