Sorting Brass by Weight

[ireload2]

The more data you have the more you can learn about your brass. After some experience you may skip all the weighing but you will know why you are skipping all the work.
Sorting by year keeps cases together that have similar temper or anneal- maybe.. If you anneal all the necks weight might be the only consideration. If you have enough cases to give you a huge lot of say 300 with close to all the same weight I would mark and save the others until much later when needed. In any event you can learn how many outliers you have.

Keep in mind that brass is 8X heavier than gun powder for the same volume. If you can tolerate a plus or minus .1 grn powder charge a plus or minus .5 grn case variation should be ok.

This sort of a good exercise for cases of unknown pedigree. It is possible for another shooter to sort out the best cases and sell you the junk on each side of the weight distribution.

So if we were all rich guys we could buy 2000 Lapua cases and sort out the best. The outliers could be sold to a victim who thinks he is getting top quality cases.

I think that I will sort by weight. Do you think that sorting by year makes a difference? I initially was just going to sort by year, but now am leaning towards sorting weight & forgetting the year. If I try to do both would get to be a logistical nightmare, not to mention there will be 'weight classes' in certain years that do not have enough cases.

I will load and the first five rounds of each group put on a Magnetospeed & ultimately chart velocity against weight. Ultimately long range accuracy to a great extent gets back to minimizing velocity spread.

Wow, that's going to be allot of work just to save a few bucks. Then again, I think that I will have far more insight on case weight.

 

[Rsadams]

As you can see some say yes some say no.... I started weight sorting bullets and brass after prep work as explained and saw great improvement.... For us not spending $100 bucks on a box of brass you will see alot of difference in weight... The only way to tell if it's right for you is to do it.. It does take more time and and for plinking it won't matter...

Sit down pick 10 pieces of prepped brass , weight sort them and the bullets so they are all very close say within a few tenths (1 or 2 ) both brass and bullets and load them... Then just pick 10 that are just loaded with out any weight sorting... Clean your rifle well , shoot a few fowlers , say two , then shoot the weight sorted.... Clean again , fire a few fowlers ( 2 ) then the unsorted 10... What ever the target tells you is your answer... I would shoot 5 let it cool then 5 let it cool and clean it...then 5 unsorted let it cool then the other 5 , don't heat up the barrel alot and expect anything to shoot great...

 

[Beau]

According to your disclipline you may be ok with the AMU recommendation- how accurate do they have to be to win their particular game? People always quote the experts in their field when its usually 3 pastures away. What i mean is when a game can be won by shooting 2moa and you need to shoot .5 moa can you follow their methods? Can a benchrest shooter get his load data and techniques from a sling shooter?

IIRC, the AMU looks for 3" (1/2 MOA) or better groups at 600 yds.

 

[johara1]

IIRC, the AMU looks for 3" (1/2 MOA) or better groups at 600 yds.

I think you will see that 600 and 1000 shooter are looking for a lot less than those numbers. ....... 3" at a 600 br match is rather large.... jim

 

[Beau]

I think you will see that 600 and 1000 shooter are looking for a lot less than those numbers. ....... 3" at a 600 br match is rather large.... jim

It fits the OP's objective & if he was shooting BR he'd only have to sort out, what, about 10 cases? If he wants smaller groups, he wouldn't be shooting .223 and he wouldn't be using cases that didn't have "Lapua" on the headstamp.

I'd sure hate to sort the number of cases it would take to get enough to be competitive in HP. As it is, you are FAR better off spending more time shooting and less time sorting. HP is more of a skill game than an equipment game.

 

[MMH]

It fits the OP's objective & if he was shooting BR he'd only have to sort out, what, about 10 cases? If he wants smaller groups, he wouldn't be shooting .223 and he wouldn't be using cases that didn't have "Lapua" on the headstamp.

I'd sure hate to sort the number of cases it would take to get enough to be competitive in HP. As it is, you are FAR better off spending more time shooting and less time sorting. HP is more of a skill game than an equipment game.

Exactly! Thank you to all that have replied. Go final question, if I sort by weight (to 0.3 gr.), is year important?

 

[JRS]

Exactly! Thank you to all that have replied. Go final question, if I sort by weight (to 0.3 gr.), is year important?

Different year head stamps will have different volume. You can have brass from the same year and same lot number, but because the brass is made on more than one machine, they are not going to be the exactly the same. Those machines don't run with exactly the same amount of wear and tolerances. Once you sort by weight, you might as well measure the rim thickness on each case also. You'll find a difference there, which could contribute to weight variation. Then you can send out your brass to have it analyzed for metallurgical composition, because that is probably where the majority of weight difference is, even though case wall thickness and volume might be the same. Volume affects burn rate… not weight.

 

[johara1]

It fits the OP's objective & if he was shooting BR he'd only have to sort out, what, about 10 cases? If he wants smaller groups, he wouldn't be shooting .223 and he wouldn't be using cases that didn't have "Lapua" on the headstamp.

I'd sure hate to sort the number of cases it would take to get enough to be competitive in HP. As it is, you are FAR better off spending more time shooting and less time sorting. HP is more of a skill game than an equipment game.

First I gave up on sorting BR. cases due to the fact that there are so many variables on the outside. If you need to check them measure volume. Neck turn them to the .0001, if you don't do that you are giving up a lot vertical. An AR. .223 does benefit from better prep than most do, I have an AR. that will hold .3 at 100 when it is loaded right.
I know a little about the XTC game, I still hold a lifetime master classification. It the gun doesn't shoot you are just wearing out a good barrel. If i go to a match I want the best equipment possible, so would be doing more testing to have all my ducks in a row.... Jim

 

[Beau]

Exactly! Thank you to all that have replied. Go final question, if I sort by weight (to 0.3 gr.), is year important?

The Army says sorting to .3gr is a waste of time.
No, year is not important. You can clean a 600 yard target with unsorted, multi year, multiple times fired LC brass with unweighed charges of stick powder.

FWIW, brass composition counts for nothing in regards to weight variance. Cartridge brass is nominally 70% copper and 30% zinc. Copper is only 3% lighter than zinc. A 1% move in composition either way only makes a 3 one-hundredth percent change in weight.
For cleaning the MR target, case weight is plenty good enough to use as a proxy for case volume.