Why can't USA make brass?

[Turbulent Turtle]

Nope. That was not the one.

 

[DukeDuke]

One thing to remember, when people start talking about how many loads they have on their brass, you don't know how they are loading it. I trashed 60 Lapua small primer 308s after the first use this yr, and there are another 140 or so that I douibt will last 3 cycles. Sure, I was running them a bit too warm. The point is comparing your brass life to mine proves nothing other than I was loading too hot.

For the most part I run W-W, and as to the brass prep, I do the same steps on my Lapua that I do on my W-W so it really makes little difference to me.

I can't see the difference in Lapua and W-W on the targets. W-W has a bit more capacity. With the right bullet powder combination that can make a difference one way or the other.

WOW! How did you do that?

 

[The Viper]

Seems like we make some of the best shooting components but why can't someone in the US make high quality brass like Lapua, Norma, or RWS? I am not trying to start anything but seems like lapua and Norma dominate when it comes to quality. Hornady is trying but not there yet. I have measured their Creedmore and 308 match brass but I won't purchase anymore till quality gets better.

Hi Sling,

In order to answer your question fully, and understand completely, we have to go back a few years into our history. For most of the last 100 years ammunition makers were only making ammo for two groups. The military and the sportsman, not the competitive target shooter.

It wasn't until long after WWII that larger numbers of target shooters came on the scene. All of the ammunition produced for sport hunters was produced for one time firing. You shoot a deer and eject the shell onto the forest floor. No one actually picked up that one piece and cherrished it enough to take it home and reload it. Most hunters are the same today. It's fired once and disposed of. Reloading really didn't become popular until the last 50 years.

The brass makers are not interested in you reloading brass over and over. They need you to keep purchasing new brass. The brass made in the U.S. was never intended to be reused. Lapua found a niche and proceeded to craft superior brass for competitive shooters. Some one above mentioned Lake City Brass. Even LCB is geared to the military.

 

[jlow]

There was an extensive study performed a few years ago by one of the gun rags. It was only .308 brass and they compared all the brands available and performed tests over a long period. The longest lasting brass was Winchester at (IIRC), 14 loadings or so. Lapua was up there also at about 10-11. I wish I could find the issue but it's been a few years now.

I think Lapua found a nice niche in "finished" virgin brass and Winchester and others are happy to leave that very small portion of the ammo/component universe to Lapua and other similar. There probably isn't enough demand to support more players. Most handloaders that I know (outside of competitors) are seeking low cost components and do not load anywhere near as much as I do. They just want to load their own so they can shoot more.

The amount of people who seek the very best brass for competition loading is vanishingly small.

This study is useful but needs to be taken with a grain of salt. From what I can see, they only tested one piece of brass from each manufacturer... There are always variations and for a truly meaningful study, they needed to have done a larger number say at least 10 and from that you will not only can tell their average life span but also how their brass varied. It’s a bit like shooting a one shot group….

 

[bigedp51]

Lake City Army Ammunition Plant makes cartridge cases to a higher quality standard than commercial cartridge cases. One of the reasons for this is because the cartridges are fired in fatter and longer chambers than SAAMI standards. A secondary effect of this is the Lake City cartridge cases deliver less bolt thrust because the cases stretch less when fired. Lake City 5.56 cartridge cases also have a higher internal case capacity than commercial .223 cartridge cases.

Lake City cartridge cases are not reloaded as standard issue ammunition but it is made to higher quality standards.

Just one of the early M16 rifles jamming problems was linked to commercial contract made 5.56 NATO ammunition that was made of softer brass. After this the military set higher mil-spec standards for all commercial contract made 5.56 NATO ammunition.

The Lake City 5.56 cases pictured below were subjected to a extreme over pressure condition, if Remington or Winchester cartridge cases had been used the AR15 would have had a Kaboom.

Both Remington and Winchester lost the very lucrative contract to manufacture ammunition at the Lake City Army Ammunition Plant and lost a good deal of money. After loosing the military contract at Lake City Winchester sold its ball powder manufacturing plant to General Dynamics weapons division. Winchester also sold its brass manufacturing plant and no longer makes its own brass.

To cut costs the Remington 700 now has a beveled hole in the bolt face for the firing pin that the primer can flow into.

The Finnish company Lapua makes one of the highest quality cartridge cases in the world. And Finland has the No. 1 ranked educational system in the world and the United States educational system is rated 41st along side some other third world countries.

And I don't think the stock holders for any of our American ammunition companies are forum members here at AccurateShooter.com.

 

[amlevin]

And Finland has the No. 1 ranked educational system in the world and the United States educational system is rated 41st along side some other third world countries.

And I don't think the stock holders for any of our American ammunition companies are forum members here at AccurateShooter.com.

Your first comment goes a long way towards explaining many of the things that are happening to our country. Just when we're looking at "41st and sliding downward", everyone seems to be fighting "Year Around School Days". Even our local school district is adding teacher days off (they call them "in service training days") with more and more non-school days for the kids.

On the second statement, if anyone here is invested in a 401k or buys any Mutual Funds, chances are high they don't even know who's stock they own. Even if they read the information provided by the fund managers, it can change from day to day.

 

[bigedp51]

Big money controls everything in our lives whether you realize it or not, now think of the recent bank bailouts and who really gained from it.

In the Pulitzer Prize book "The Guns of August" written by Barbara W. Tuchman the author laid out the causes of World War One. And in the last chapter states that the United States did not get involved in the war for patriotic reasons. The U.S got involved in WWI because our banks had loaned Britain so much money the only way to get the money back was to help Britain win the war.

And history repeated itself in WWII, the Japanese attacked the U.S. and bombed Pearl Harbor but the European war again became the number one priority.

ATK now runs Lake City Army Amunition Plant, and ATK owns CCI/Speer, Federal ammunition, Thiokol propulsion, and is an aerospace, defense, and commercial products company that has many contracts with the U.S Government.

ATK owns Federal Ammunition and even after making so much money from the U.S. Government and American consumers, Federal cartridge cases are known for soft brass and loose primer pockets after the first firing. "BUT" it also makes higher quality cartridge cases for the military and charges top dollar for them.

When the Russian Premier Alexei Kosygin visited the U.S. he attended a Washington Government party, at the party Kosygin was asked by an American reporter what was the difference between Communism and Capitalism.

Kosygin replied: "Under Capitalism man exploits man and under Communism its just the other way around".