Lapua Brass Queation

[STS]

Anyone have any insight into the current production Lapua .223 brass? I have heard in the past the Lapua headstamp brass was made by someone other than Lapua and was of lesser quality than one expects from Lapua. I am interested in the quality of the current brass under their label. Thanks

 

[AndyTaber]

You have to be careful about what you "hear" on the inernet. I bought two boxes of Lapua brass last year in .223. One carboard box the other the new blue box. Both were very good. Much better (consistant weight, shoulder, neck) than the Lake City I had been shooting. My scores improved dramatically with this stuff.

 

[Laurie]

I doubt very much if anybody else made this brass for Lapua - and if that ever happened, I'd bet Lapua wouldn't have its headstamp on it. This is a company that really takes care and pride in its brass quality (consistent dimensions) and work hardening / annealing to get the hardness gradations along the case as close to ideal as possible.

Until a few years ago, Lapua .223R cases were very thick-walled and were at the low end of the capacity league which was bad from an MV point of view as you had to reduce charges considerably over Winchester, R-P and Lake City competitors. The '.223 Match' was then introduced maybe 5 years ago that is much thinner moving it near the top of the capacity league. It wasn't headstamped 'Match' for a while, only the cartons so marked. Sometime recently, cases started being heastamped as 'Lapua .223 Match', and are if anything slightly roomier. My minimum SAAMI chamber gives 30.6gn water overflow capacity in such cases bought last year.

Quality of these cases is very good indeed with necks in the 0.125" to a little over 0.0130" range very few individual cases hitting 0.001" variation around the neck. Weight spreads in a box are also small. I was able to give cases a light clean-up neck turn to either 0.0125", or 0.0130" depending on their original thickness, and obtain 250 batched and prepped cases from an original lot of 300, the odd 50 out of my selection parameters and used as bought for load development and practice. These were still in cardboard cartons, pre blue box. I should see how the blue box examples stack up shortly when Hannam's Reloading Limited, the UK importer, gets its next order in shortly.

Laurie,
York, England

 

[jonbearman]

Laurie,can you keep your competition weapons at home or do you have to leave them where ever you shoot? How do you transport them to the next shoot?

 

[Rust]

My recent purchase of the new blue plastic box .223 (Lot P00449901) was excellent, very uniform neck thickness, uniform weight, good primer pockets. As mentioned the newer .223 brass is quite a bit lighter with much more case capacity than the production from years back.

I've never gotten a substandard batch of Lapua in 6.5 X 284, .308 or 223. The heavy .223 brass from years back was simply heavy, not of substandard quality.

 

[Laurie]

Jon,

the authorities let us keep our rifles at home subject to suitable security (usually gun cabinets built to a BS specification). There have been calls from the anti-gun looby and some politicians over the years for firearms to be held 'in gun club premises' or police stations, but always rejected due to the logistics involved, plus it wouldn't stop a determined 'mad gunman' anyway! Most shooters aren't members of 'gun clubs' as they are what North Americans call 'hunters' and we call 'field shooters', 'sporting shooters' or 'deerstalkers'

Laurie

 

[SmokinJoe]

Lapua apparently did farm out the 223 brass maybe 10 years ago. I had some & it didn't look at all like Lapua brass normally looks, more like Winchester I would say. It also didn't preform like we have come to expect from Lapua. That said, I just bought 500 pieces of blue box 223 & it looks like the good stuff.

 

[LHSmith]

The word was Lapua farmed out .222 brass maybe 3-5 years ago.....I believe it....I got some and it isn't even close to Lapua standards. They then decided not to import 222 brass for ~2 years, and just last year made it available for us here in USA again. From what I have heard, this new batch is GTG.

 

[STS]

That more or less is what I had heard from some fellow shooters.