gamestalker
member
This is the third batch of Win brass I've had problems with. Fortunately this problem is less critical than the last batch I bought. Anyway, it's 7mm RM, I bought 6 bags, 5 of them were just fine, but the one bag had some super tight necks, and the shoulders were visually very inconsistent, deep radial ripples. I suppose those might just iron out when fired, but the big problem is, they won't chamber in any of my rifles.
The inside diameter of the necks was .275", some were even tighter than that. The necks on most had a really thick internal lip. Not just the typical lip that a chamfer will remove. They have a thick region that extends radially from inside the top of the mouth, and extends at least .050" down the inside of the neck. I first tried to just neck size them to get the necks to usable spec, but due to the shoulders being so badly out of spec, I had to run them through a FL die to bump the high spots on the shoulders enough to fit the chamber I'm working up in. Really disappointing when it concerns new brass.
And based on my observation a couple of weeks ago, I ran into a problem with factory .243 win. ammunition "WW" that was fired from my action, a box of fresh factory ammunition. So I know it was either the load, the brass, or a combination of both. The cases were displaying very obvious incipient head separations. The brass, primer flow, and bolt lift all indicated pressures were through the roof.
So after getting back to the house, I FL sized all of them, trimmed, reamed/chamfer, cleaned the pockets, and then weighed the brass. It was much heavier than any other .243 brass in my inventory, including other once fired WW brass, so I'm thinking thicker brass caused pressures to spike. But since it's all factory ammunition, it's impossible to know if it had anything to do with powder charges or the thick brass. Like I said, this is becoming a rather redundant problem with WW brass for me.
So, would it even be worth while to contact Winchester considering I already FL sized, trimmed, ream/chamfered, all 50 pieces?
GS
The inside diameter of the necks was .275", some were even tighter than that. The necks on most had a really thick internal lip. Not just the typical lip that a chamfer will remove. They have a thick region that extends radially from inside the top of the mouth, and extends at least .050" down the inside of the neck. I first tried to just neck size them to get the necks to usable spec, but due to the shoulders being so badly out of spec, I had to run them through a FL die to bump the high spots on the shoulders enough to fit the chamber I'm working up in. Really disappointing when it concerns new brass.
And based on my observation a couple of weeks ago, I ran into a problem with factory .243 win. ammunition "WW" that was fired from my action, a box of fresh factory ammunition. So I know it was either the load, the brass, or a combination of both. The cases were displaying very obvious incipient head separations. The brass, primer flow, and bolt lift all indicated pressures were through the roof.
So after getting back to the house, I FL sized all of them, trimmed, reamed/chamfer, cleaned the pockets, and then weighed the brass. It was much heavier than any other .243 brass in my inventory, including other once fired WW brass, so I'm thinking thicker brass caused pressures to spike. But since it's all factory ammunition, it's impossible to know if it had anything to do with powder charges or the thick brass. Like I said, this is becoming a rather redundant problem with WW brass for me.
So, would it even be worth while to contact Winchester considering I already FL sized, trimmed, ream/chamfered, all 50 pieces?
GS
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