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Starline Brass Prep

USAFRet

Silver $$ Contributor
I am ordering some Starline brass for 6.5 Creedmoor. What do y'all do for prep, since this is new brass? Heard some folks doing full case prep, including polishing. Others just priming and loading as is.
 
For 6.5 diameter I run a .262 mandrel in lubed case mouth, chamfer & de-bur and load for fire-forming. Have 100 pcs. for my 260AI and going to the third load now. Looking at shoulder bump very uniform and great performance.
 
Unfortunately, most new brass need helps. Casemouth is not a perfect circle.

99% of the time, I neck size or collet size, inside/outside chamfer, and remove burr from firing pin hole.
 
I use, Petersen Brass, in my 6.5 Creed, I just chamfer In / Out, lite lube, Size, in Forster Dies and ,.. GO !
Seen, NO,.. Flash hole,.. "Burrs".
I F L size, set Back, Shoulder, lightly after, Fired,. Good Stuff !
I have to Use about, a 1/2 a Grain, LESS Powder BELOW Max, due to, Brass Thickness.
 
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With Lapua and Starline all I do is push a mandrel through the neck and its all good, first firing ES and SD numbers are almost as good as fired brass.

With Alpha brass I had to resize the brass due to the I.D. of the neck being
larger than than the bullet its supposed to hold.

I adjust my process to the brass I am working with, no reason to run the cases through a resizing die if its not going to provide a benefit.
 
I am ordering some Starline brass for 6.5 Creedmoor. What do y'all do for prep, since this is new brass? Heard some folks doing full case prep, including polishing. Others just priming and loading as is.
I always treat new brass like it's already been fired, cleaned, and annealed. My first step is to lube and size to my normal settings, then mandrel, chamfer, debur, brush, and prime/charge. Doing that, I've found, gives you much better results that are closer to your fired brass SD's and ES's. It makes the fireform first shooting "useful".
 
Went through a batch of new Starline for 30-30 little over a week ago. You will need to run them through a sizing die or at least a mandrel as there were several dented necks. I fully expected that since they ship in a bag.

They don't need to be tumbled, I did because I ran them all through a full length sizing die and was simplest way to remove the die wax.

Checked several pockets, Sinclair uniformer didn't touch any so will do that after 1st firing. Though probably a waste of time, I did sort by weight +/- .5gr and ended up with 3 groups and 6 real outliers I culled. You'll get more than you order (I got 255) so it's a wash.
 
Went through a batch of new Starline for 30-30 little over a week ago. You will need to run them through a sizing die or at least a mandrel as there were several dented necks. I fully expected that since they ship in a bag.

They don't need to be tumbled, I did because I ran them all through a full length sizing die and was simplest way to remove the die wax.

Checked several pockets, Sinclair uniformer didn't touch any so will do that after 1st firing. Though probably a waste of time, I did sort by weight +/- .5gr and ended up with 3 groups and 6 real outliers I culled. You'll get more than you order (I got 255) so it's a wash.
Yea the weight variance for my 100 pcs. was exactly 2.0 grains. 170.0 - 172.0 gr.
 
Mine weighed 139.8 to over 143.3gr so separated 93ea to 139.8 - 140.9gr, 88ea 142.0 - 143.1gr & 68ea 141.0 - 141.9gr. Good enough for 30-30 work.
 
I didn't separate mine. Just placed them in the 100 ct. box in order and normally that will be their home for the duration.
 
Okay, fairly new to reloading. Have not done any madrel, chamfering, annealing or anything like that. I just run my spent brass through the sizing die, trim as needed and debur. So, I reckon i will treat it like shot brass.
 
New cases should at least be chamfered to remove the edges on the neck opening so that brass particles are not shaved off and scratch your die. Also chamfering makes bullet seating easier and help align the bullet with the seating stem especially if you are using flat base bullets.

I always full size with a zero-shoulder bump. The reason is to align the neck with the body of the die and to uniform the inside of the neck with the expander. On virgin cases, it's advisable to allow them to fully fire form to the rifle chamber so you don't want to push the shoulder back.

I also debur the flash hole and uniform the pockets but I cannot say that this has improved my groups.

If you measure the length of your rifle chamber with a Sinclair chamber length gauge you may find that you do not need to trim the cases and may not need to for several firings. A lot of chambers are cut longer than SAMMI specs. There are some that assert that trimming cases too short help accelerate the formation of a carbon ring. I don't know if that's true but I've seen a lot of shooters advocating this.
 
I take my brand new .308 Lapua Brass, Neck Size it, Prime it, Load it, Seat a bullet, and shoot it. This is 10 shots at 500 yards today.

.3538 MOA
 

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