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New winchester brass, are these acceptable?

I just recieved the 200 new Winchester brass I ordered Monday. When I inspected them to prep for loading I found that 35 have either flat spots on the mouths or they were not round, also two had cracks in the necks. I'm afraid to open the other bag.
winchesterbrass005.jpg

winchesterbrass004.jpg

winchesterbrass003.jpg
 
thats be best lookin WW brass that I hav seen in a long time......every brand including Lapua has a cupla ones that are bad per hundred....run em over an expander ball and they will be fine...once you shoot em or FF you will never know it....they are suprizingly good quality metal in em.....I got several 30-06 a while bak that looked like the jolly green giant had walked all over em...,,,,and they are dooing fine for me.....they wear good, hold lots of pressure withour loosing the primer pokets and shuld serv u well...Roger
 
I expected to have a few, but 35. I was told that Winchester is better than Remington, it may hold up better, but out of the bag the Remington I had sure looked better.
 
A few weeks ago, I prepped 500 cases of Win brass that I bought over 7 years ago. No splits but some with dented necks that were rounded with a Sinclair mandrel.
 
When I get new brass I always size them.

What I do is tighten down my die with a med size washer under it. This lets most of the case go into the die but not enough to get the case stuck, I don't lube them at all. This takes out most of the little dings in the case mouth. When you fire the round all of the body dings are fired out. Most new brass does have these problems.

A few years back all new brass had one or two extra to take care of this problem, not anymore they don't care.

Will
 
tido250 said:
That's all in how it was handled b4 u got it,its a good idea to run em through ur sizing die first anyhow.

Actually, that's a terrible idea. You should never F/L resize virgin brass as it will shorten brass life. I use a mandrel from Sinclair to round out the mouth for my Winchester and Lapua virgin brass. Then for Winchester, it's chamfer, deburr and pop the flash hole residue and it's ready to load. For Lapua, I just load after the mandrel operation.
 
bayou shooter said:
tido250 said:
That's all in how it was handled b4 u got it,its a good idea to run em through ur sizing die first anyhow.

Actually, that's a terrible idea. You should never F/L resize virgin brass as it will shorten brass life. I use a mandrel from Sinclair to round out the mouth for my Winchester and Lapua virgin brass. Then for Winchester, it's chamfer, deburr and pop the flash hole residue and it's ready to load. For Lapua, I just load after the mandrel operation.

Thats exactly how I do it along with uniforming the primer pockets on Winchester brass. The brass the OP posted pics of is typical Winchester from out of the bag, but its good stuff. Its what i use in my 6MM Ackley Improved's as i really don't have many other options for a tight neck chamber.

Frank
 
Crap, I thought I had the primer pocket uniforming listed for Winchester. I must have forgot. I use my Trim Mate and it's all set up for that. Works very quickly.
 
I called Winchester and the worst ones are going back. I opened the second bag and hardly any had any issues, in fact I didn't cull any of them.
 
necchi said:
bayou shooter said:
Actually, that's a terrible idea. You should never F/L resize virgin brass as it will shorten brass life.

That's a crock,, :o

+1
With the die backed off all your doing it straightening the neck out from any dings etc from shipping. Not really not even touching the case walls or shoulder as they are usually undersized right from the factory.
 
Really? So tell me, why would you even want to resize a piece of virgin brass in the first place?

If it's to round out the mouth, just use a mandrel or send the case partway into a sizing die to let the expander ball round out the mouth.

If you have another reason in mind, I would love to hear it.

A piece of virgin brass is manufactured so that it has the proper dimensions for that cartridge. When you fire the cartridge some dimensional changes take place and it is the job of the sizing die to in effect, stuff the case back into its initial shape. One of these dimensions is the length of the case up to the shoulder of the case. We have all heard about the concept of pushing back the shoulders; let's look at that a little bit. A bottleneck case is headspaced on a datum point somewhere on the shoulder. The specs for a specific caliber will have that measurement within a specific range. If the chamber is too long, the case will stretch and can rupture when the cartridge is fired. If the chamber is too short, the bolt will not close and lock.

The case will fit nicely in a proper size chamber and may have a few thousandths of an inch of play. When we fire the cartridge, the case will expand to fill the chamber and obturate that end of the barrel and then brass being what it is will go back to its original dimension or rather, close to it. This is of course, assuming that you do not have a very hot load that overcomes the capability of the brass to pop back, in which case you can barely open the bolt.

Resizing the fired case is where we push the shoulder back a little bit, to make it as close to the original dimension as we can, remembering that brass does have this elastic tendency. We usually resize to set the shoulder back just a few thousandths short of the fired dimension, if the brass will be used in the same rifle all the time. If the brass is to be used in any rifle, we need to set it back to the size of the tightest chamber we have, or better yet, just try to size it back to the original specs.

A sizing die has dimensions that are a little smaller than a perfect piece of brass. This is because of the spring back effect of the brass. Because we are making it smaller, we or rather, the press is exerting a lot of pressure on the case to stuff it into the tight die and we use some kind of lubricant to ensure we can get the brass out of this too tight chamber. Think of a sizing die as the reverse of a gun chamber, we have to force the brass into the die and once it’s in there, we better have some lubricant to make sure it comes out or it gets stuck in there. A fired case gets squeezed back to the original dimensions it had had when it was manufactured, or that’s the goal. Accuracy mavens who use the case in the same chamber for every firing will do things a little differently and may just neck size or adjust the shoulder bump and so on.

So, what happens when we resize a virgin piece of brass? Remember, this case is at its optimum dimensions and was manufactured that way. It is the epitome of what a case should be. We know the sizing die is smaller than the perfect case, but if you do not believe that, go ahead and resize a virgin case without lubing it first. If you can put it in and withdraw it without any lube, you have accomplished absolutely nothing except spend some time doing it.

On the other hand, if you have to lube the virgin case that means the die is doing work on it and it is changing the dimensions of the case. Since we are starting with a case that has the proper dimensions, we are going to shorten those dimensions and the big one we shorten is headspace by pushing back the shoulders. We have now made a perfectly good virgin piece of brass shorter than specs and have created a headspace issue where none existed before.

When we fire that smaller-than-spec case, the brass will stretch more than it needs to in order to obturate the chamber. In other words the case will have to stretch more to fill the chamber and as we all know that extra brass needed will come from the area just above the extractor ring. And this amount is more than what is needed or expected, simply because we made the case smaller than specs. So, on the very first firing of you resized virgin brass, you have shortened the life of that brass, for no good reason.

Remember the rule; if you have to use lube in order to be able to extract the case from the die, you have shortened the dimensions of a perfectly fine piece of virgin brass.
 
Justinp61,
If they worry you badly, send them back and tell them to give you another bag. As for the split necks, toss them in the trash to save yourself other problems. BUT, as has been said by many, either use a Mandrel (which is your best option) to straighten out the dents, etc OR, use a Neck Sizing Die (remove the expander ball is what I'd do) or Bushing Die AND the mandrel. Now I'm going to assume you are using this brass for hunting and not serious accuracy shooting as Winchester isn't what you'd want in the first place. And after your fireform the brass, check each and every piece of brass to make sure there no no other splits in the necks. Given the quality of SOME brass these days, your situation doesn't surprise me in the least. That's why I don't buy the cheap stuff anymore.
 
I run all new brass packaged in bags through the FL die and to me, it's a no brainier. The necks have dings and are not uniform because of rough handling before I purchased them. If some of the necks are out of round, some of the bodies could also be out of round. If you jam one of these cases into your chamber, you could have a problem. Running the cases through the Fl die will correct these issues. If I loose 1 reload in the long run by doing this, so be it.
 
bayou shooter said:
Really? So tell me, why would you even want to resize a piece of virgin brass in the first place?

Ever hear of or seen shipping damage? Or as in the topic of this thread a few random cases in a bag or box that are out of tolerance in some form.

I called it a crock because of your statement;
"You should never F/L resize virgin brass as it will shorten brass life."

If I FL size new brass then I know I have removed any possible variables created during the packaging and handling by indiscriminate handlers after the brass has left the machine at the factory.

Fl sizing the first time, leaves me with brass that is in a known first time loading condition and can be treated in the same manner afterword whether further FL, neck only or partial sizing as required as technique for the gun it's loaded for.

While many (as well as myself) will size fired brass only as needed to fit the guns chamber, many successful BR shooters FL size everytime they load.

The blanket statement that FL sized virgin brass will automatically shorten brass life simply isn't true.

Not sure how the lube issue applies, but I lube all brass that goes in too my dies, body and inside neck, every time I size.
 
You misunderstood. You lose a lot more than one loading when you F/L resize virgin brass; you more or less ruin the case. But hey, it's your cases.

I have bought thousands of virgin cases (Winchester and Lapua) and I have yet to see a single one where the body was out of round. After putting all of them through the mandrel, they have always chambered properly even in some VERY tight match chambers.

Yes, Winchester virgin brass gets lots of dings in the mouth but even Lapua brass in their boxes still have mouths that are out of round. My suspicion is that shipping companies have huge vibrating machines in which they put goods to be shiped and shake them all to heck and back to make sure they are packed well and will not spill in their precious trucks. This is the reason shipping stuff is so expensive; they have to amortize the cost of those shaking machines.
 
necchi said:
bayou shooter said:
Really? So tell me, why would you even want to resize a piece of virgin brass in the first place?

Ever hear of or seen shipping damage? Or as in the topic of this thread a few random cases in a bag or box that are out of tolerance in some form.

I called it a crock because of your statement;
"You should never F/L resize virgin brass as it will shorten brass life."

If I FL size new brass then I know I have removed any possible variables created during the packaging and handling by indiscriminate handlers after the brass has left the machine at the factory.

Fl sizing the first time, leaves me with brass that is in a known first time loading condition and can be treated in the same manner afterword whether further FL, neck only or partial sizing as required as technique for the gun it's loaded for.

Never mind that this "known first time loading condition" has now created a headspace issue where non existed before. Squeezing virgin brass makes it shorter from the first firing.

While many (as well as myself) will size fired brass only as needed to fit the guns chamber, many successful BR shooters FL size everytime they load.

The blanket statement that FL sized virgin brass will automatically shorten brass life simply isn't true.

Ok. I explained in detail why it does shorten brass life; just saying "isn't true" is not a very good explanation as to why you believe it to be so.

Not sure how the lube issue applies, but I lube all brass that goes in too my dies, body and inside neck, every time I size.

And that is exactly the illustration that you do not understand what F/L sizing does to virgin brass.

At any rate, I have explained in great detail why one does not want to F/L resize virgin brass. I do not do it and I F/L resize all my match brass after every firing, with a small base die to boot.

If you think F/L sizing virgin brass instead of just rounding out the mouth makes it better, then by all means continue to do so; it's your brass.
 
bayou shooter said:
You lose a lot more than one loading when you F/L resize virgin brass; you more or less ruin the case.

Fooey! We can aggree to disaggree with that one. I don't care how many you've bought. Your logic that somehow virgin brass is damaged more so, simply because of it's unfired matrix condition makes no sence beyond a wives tail myth.
 

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