204Ruger

So I decided to take 100 pices of once fired ,necksized, trimed, unprimed brass and though them on a scale. 80% of them ,I was able to sort into two lots within .7 of a grain. As for the outher 20% they were way out on both sides of my range. Some by as much as 7.7 grains.
During previos range time with the crony I had marked all the brass that gave me abnormal velositys and as expected the marked brass all fell into that 20% range. I guess the moral of the story is weighing and sorting brass is going to become a manditory step for me.

OR.....you could buy Nosler 204 brass that is weight sorted and fully prepped if you don't want to dink around with it. A bit on the spendy side, but it saves hours of time, especially if you shoot PD's or ground squirrels, and easily shoot 300 rounds a day. (We do.)

I used one batch of Nosler brass and on the third loading the primers practically fell into the pockets they were so loose. I will toss it after this firing and will watch it closely for leakage when I start to use this batch. I have found no brass that I like for the 204 but mostly use ww. I'm just spoiled by the consistency of Lapua brass. Makes a 20 ppc tempting to consider though the total brass bill would be considerable. I have too much invested to switch now.

Ray, same here in regard to Lapua. I'm certain they'll start making 204 brass eventually; sooner would sure be better than later.

On the Nosler brass issue (which is made by Norma).....I've got one batch that I'm on my fourth loading (book max) and the pockets are still as tight as day one. Maybe you're boosting pressures up a bit in that Texas heat and expanding those primer pockets a tad? Both my WW and Nosler 204 brass is all still chugging along just fine. Some of my WW cases have been loaded six times........

I keep records on the firings and the nosler was never fired hot. some of my ww was shot up in the high end, like around 4000 fps with a 40 grain bullet and they are starting to get loose after 7 firings. The nosler was shot down around 3800 and they are gone after two firings. It was just a test to see if the extra cost was worth it. They did look better than the ww but no life.

I agree with RIO on that Nosler, great stuff ans well worth the investments vs buying a lot of prep and measurement tools (I ended up doing both, LOL!). Primer pockets were ok for me.

Now the Hornady... I ended up with about 100 cases from factory loads. Total yuk. Primer pockets are extremely tight, wall thickness variation was very bad (0.009 - 0.013) and in correspondance with wall thickness variation, the case weight variation was all over the map (I'll try to post figures for that when I get home).

Perhaps I just got unusually bad stuff. Dunno. Perhaps their boxed brass is superior. Dunno.

The figures are:

25 pcs of the Hornady ranged over 8 grains, possibly more, I got that sick feeling once I hit the 20 pcs mark.

50 pcs of Nosler ranged 0.6 grains.