Sorting brass by wieght

[palerider]

I have begun to start sorting my resized,decapped,trimmed,brass,Win NT .223) by wieght
using my FA micro digital scale. I hope to make more accurate loads by doing this.

For those that do or thoughts on:what kind of tolerance should I hold?

What wieght measurement should i be using, grains, grams etc......?

 

[relliott]

Check out this thread.

http://www.websitetoolbox.com/tool/post/6mmbr/vpost?id=2512495

 

[palerider]

that thread put my dreams of building a bench rest rifle in the closet for awhile. just starting out reloading so alot to learn before i even jump into that pool.

I know i will be rereading that thread again this weekend if not 10X's.

If i started to understand it is that case volume is more important than case wieght? All else set aside.

Thanks for the link

 

[billmo]

palerider, you have the idea. But, you know what I would do? I would not worry about all the hoop-a-laa. Sometimes we can spend more time chasing our expectations than we actually spend realizing them. I'm no BR shooter but I do shoot a lot. In most cases my groups are as good or better if I relax, load my bullets as best I can and "GO SHOOT". After your brass is blown out and you have worked up an acceptable load, then if you have a flyer that you just can't put a finger on, take that case out of your set and replace it with another. Less time at the bench means more trigger time which will pay bigger dividends at the end of the day. Just an opinion. Try it. You may like it. Bill

 

[CatShooter]

that thread put my dreams of building a bench rest rifle in the closet for awhile. just starting out reloading so alot to learn before i even jump into that pool.

I know i will be rereading that thread again this weekend if not 10X's.

If i started to understand it is that case volume is more important than case wieght? All else set aside.

Thanks for the link

Palerider...

Don't let that thread throw water on your desire to have a top grade rifle.

Weighing cases can be productive, but you must determine to what level does it matter.

If you have a 6mm-Jazbo rifle, and it is a benchrest or match grade rifle... if you have a batch of cases that vary from 150 to 180 grains, it surely would help a lot to sort them by weight.

But by what increment?

Sorting cases to +/- 10 grains... +/- 1 grain... +/- 0.1 grain... or +/- 0.001 grain.

At what point does it stop making a difference?

I bought a batch of Fed Gold Match brass for a match rifle that was a very good shooter,and still is!!), and the rifle's performance went in the toilet.

It took weeks of looking for the problem before I discovered that the weight of the cases was spread across 20+ grains. When they were sorted by weight, and one batch was used, the rifle came back to life.

So, I can tell you from personal experance that a +/- 10 spread sucks, and needs to be sorted.



Using the same rifle, I took one case and marked it with a sharpie marker, and loading at the range, I shot the same case, in the same position in the chamber, 28 times at the range to see if there were absolutely NO variable in the case, what could I expect.

Well, you won't get "0" ES, and a single hole group.

So... somewhere between +/- 10 grains, and "0" grains, there is a point when the sorting increment stops making any difference - the difference gets lost in "the noise".

So if you ARE going to weight cases, you need to determine what is a reasonable point to pick, and what is anal compulsive.

Some time back, a new kid on this site asked about case prep for a Prairie Dog shoot in South Dakota, and said that he had two Rem 700 factory "Varmint Special" rifles, a 222 and a 223, with 200 pieces of new Rem brass in each caliber. He didn't have much money, and was a fairly new handloader.

The advice he got from the anal BR group was to weight all the cases and separate them into groups by 0.1 grains.

Now, WHAT THE HELL FOR??? It's a friggin' factory rifle, shooting PDs under the worst wind conditions this side of the Russian Tundra...

All of the above is to try to keep this case weighing thing under control - don't let the anal compulsives ruin your day.

Go out and get your rifle.

Remember this. You will learn more, and learn it faster, by loading for a good rifle, than you will loading for a piece of crap.

With a good rifle, you you do something right, you will IMMEDIATELY see the results on paper,in teaching, they call it "instant feedback").

With a piece of crap rifle, you can do good stuff, and see no change in your shooting.

Get the nice riffle... Get one with a no turn neck that takes Lapua brass... get a 6mmBR with a no turn chamber, and you will be in "Pig Heaven"...

... enjoy life, it's short!!! Take my word for it!!!


.

 

[Winchester69]

Weighing cases can be productive, but you must determine to what level does it matter.

:thumb:

 

[palerider]

thanks guys,

Back today and ready to tackle anything. can't wait to see what type of accurate loads i can come up with. Even knowing it may take a couple months or all summer depending on time....

Sure i'll be back with more questions

 

[ronemus]

I did an experiment several years ago to determine just how much effect brass weight has on .223 loads. I used WW brass,sized, trimmed and deburred, primer pockets uniformed, flash holes deburred, and neck turned), WSR primers, charges of RL-15 or N-550 powder weighed to 0.1 gr, and 75 gr A-Max bullets. Using the lightest and heaviest cases,sorted from 1000 once-fired I had on hand), I had two lots of 10 cases with a 3 gr difference in weight. The average muzzle velocity difference was 16 fps, just a bit more than the 12 fps due to 0.1 gr of powder. I choose to sort 0.5 gr lots of brass for my long range loads, but the effect will only matter at 800-1000 yards - the vertical displacement on the target from such a small velocity change is negligible at shorter distances. Unless you control all other sources of variation, the effect of brass weight is negligible.

 

[Groundhogwhacka]

Catshooter: I had the question about weight sorting brass on my mind too and on first read I thought your post pretty much made up my mind to not mess with it but after reading again it just further convoluted my thinking.

I am in the process of putting together a 6.5x47 and was debating on the benefits of sorting brass by weight. Most of my shooting will be groundhogs under 400yds so I was planning on a 95gr V-max. But I got bit by the long range bug and my personal record of a 607yd prairie poodle splat is begging to be bested. And a 1000yd club hat would look sweet on my hat rack. I know I will have to cook up a finely tuned load but with the kind of wind we deal with in dogtowns I don't know if brass sorting would be worth it.

Hell, I'll just go fire up the scale and see how the new Lapua brass weighs out.

 

[CatShooter]

Catshooter: I had the question about weight sorting brass on my mind too and on first read I thought your post pretty much made up my mind to not mess with it but after reading again it just further convoluted my thinking.

I am in the process of putting together a 6.5x47 and was debating on the benefits of sorting brass by weight. Most of my shooting will be groundhogs under 400yds so I was planning on a 95gr V-max. But I got bit by the long range bug and my personal record of a 607yd prairie poodle splat is begging to be bested. And a 1000yd club hat would look sweet on my hat rack. I know I will have to cook up a finely tuned load but with the kind of wind we deal with in dogtowns I don't know if brass sorting would be worth it.

Hell, I'll just go fire up the scale and see how the new Lapua brass weighs out.

There's an old Indian saying, "White man that weighs brass when wind is blowing so hard that he has to tie the truck down, is a fool"

I bought a .264 WM Rem Sendero-II SF a while back to use on feral dogs at long range.

I picked up a few hundred Win cases for it, and decided to weigh them, since this was to be a loooong range rig.

The first 20 were within 2 grains total run out, and I quit.

.

I think there are times when it pays, but there are times when it's a waste of time too.

On a PD town, it's a waste of time.


.

 

[REELDOC]

I am but still a rookie reloader but............Make sure you completely prep your brass before weighing.

If you are going to uniform the primer pockets do all of them before weighing. You will be suprised to find how much metal comes out of those little holes.

Additionally I've been told by some of the best shooters in the business that one of the most important steps you can take is to debur the flash holes. I can tell you that there can be a lot of metal removed during that process also. This is the only step that I have found that acutally would show up over a chrono, at least in my experience. When I was anal and bothering the hell out of everyone I did a test with twenty rounds loaded the same with the only exception being 10 had the flash holes deburred. The E and S numbers on the deburred brass were lower.

If you resize, trim, debur and uniform you have done everything, short of neck turning/reaming, to make all things equal when you weigh. You can't do anything about anything else on the brass to get apples to apples comparison.

Listen to the pussy slayer, he knows of what he speaks.

 

[Groundhogwhacka]

Reeldoc, What kind of flash hole deburr tool do you use? I bought one a while back but its results were rather displeasing.

 

[REELDOC]

http://www.sinclairintl.com/cgi-bin/category.cgi?category=RECPDT&item=DB-1000&type=store

This one seems to work the best for me. Others may have different preferences. Do not get the handle, get the tool only. Chuck it up in your drill and let it do the work. Although Sinclair says it doesn't make any difference, I recommend that trim all of the brass first since it indexes off the mouth which will determine the depth of cut. It tried it both ways when I first got the tool and found that if I didn't trim them first I could go back and still have slight burrs left.

 

[boogershooter]

I checked 100 .308 lapuas 2 eves ago...little variance,not enough to mention!

 

[Groundhogwhacka]

I ran all the new Lapua 6.5x47 cases across the scale and had a 2.7gr high to low variance. The majority of them fell between 161 and 162gr. There were four below 160gr and four that were over 161.9gr. I say to me and the shooting I do its probably not going to make much difference and be more effort than its worth to keep them all sorted out and seperated by weight. In my mind sorting them by volume would make more sense and be more definate anyhow.

Just out of curiosity I grabbed a handfull of Winchester 223 brass I had prepped getting ready for Varmint season. I doesn't matter to me one way or the other because its mostly volume ammo and as long as it shoots minute of groundhog at 200yds I'm happy, but the twenty or so I ran across the scale were within a 2.3gr spread. I am sure if I did a hundred of them the spread would open up but I was pretty impressed for WWB brass to be that consistant.

 

[palerider]

Just got done sorting 1,094 cases WIN NT 223REM cases....
Sorted them in lots of .5 grain
They ranged from 92.X grains - 95.X grains
Most were anywhere from 93.0 - 94.5 grains

thought i would try this as a strarting point for experimenting my first reloads for 100yds

 

[billmo]

I am but still a rookie reloader but............Make sure you completely prep your brass before weighing.

If you are going to uniform the primer pockets do all of them before weighing. You will be suprised to find how much metal comes out of those little holes.

Additionally I've been told by some of the best shooters in the business that one of the most important steps you can take is to debur the flash holes. I can tell you that there can be a lot of metal removed during that process also. This is the only step that I have found that acutally would show up over a chrono, at least in my experience. When I was anal and bothering the hell out of everyone I did a test with twenty rounds loaded the same with the only exception being 10 had the flash holes deburred. The E and S numbers on the deburred brass were lower.

If you resize, trim, debur and uniform you have done everything, short of neck turning/reaming, to make all things equal when you weigh. You can't do anything about anything else on the brass to get apples to apples comparison.

Listen to the pussy slayer, he knows of what he speaks.

REELDOC, You got that right. He is the man for sure. He's got all his marbles in one sack. You can bank on it. Bill