Question about lapua brass

[notaglockfanboy]

I have always used Winchester, Remington, federal etc, but recently purchased a box of Lapua brass for my .308. My question is should I use the same load in the Lapua as I was using in the Winchester or should I worry about reduced case capacity and reduce the load or completely work up a new load from scratch??

 

[jwrowland77]

No do not use the same load. Start from scratch and work back up.

I use Winchester and Lapua brass, and find that the loads that are most accurate in my rifles using the Lapua brass, are about 1.5gr lower in charge, but yet I get more velocity.

You definitely want to start from the beginning.

 

[jwrowland77]

Also, definitely uniform the primer pocket in the Lapua brass.

The only time I've ever had a primer not go off, was because the center had a little hump in the middle, and caused the primer to more or less bounce off the bottom. Once I uniformed the pockets, all the primers went off like they should have.

 

[notaglockfanboy]

No do not use the same load. Start from scratch and work back up.

I use Winchester and Lapua brass, and find that the loads that are most accurate in my rifles using the Lapua brass, are about 1.5gr lower in charge, but yet I get more velocity.

You definitely want to start from the beginning

Thank you for the info. I wondered about the velocity factor if the load had to be reduced. I prepped all 100 of the brass and tumbled it to a nice shine, now time to work up my load and waste all those bullets and powder.

 

[quartermaster]

I wish Lapua made brass in more calibers. I really like it. It is very uniform and seems to hold up well.

 

[41 Mag]

I have some in a couple of calibers. For the most part it has been excellent for the uses I have for it. I wasn't really looking for extreme accuracy but mainly for top end brass which it is.

I never found any need to adress some of the things reported here in the ones I have worked with. For the most part I have found it is ready to load right out of the box.

I used some in conjunction with both new Win and Rem when I started to work up loads for my 25-06 AI. In all fairness though I had to first fire form the Lapua where as while I still had to fom the others to the AI chamber they both started out as 25-06 to begin with. After forming however they were all annealed and the work up began. I didn't really find anything extraordinary about the Lapua with regard to being able to beat out the other two with number of loads per case or with working up to the top end load in this particular rifle. I used 5 cases of each brand for the initial work up so as to somewhat determin which might be the best. So far they all have had over 8 loads on them with no signs of failure to report.

Is it great brass, you bet, is it better than others brands for general all around shooting or hunting, I personally wouldn't say so unless your loading for something specific or target shooting for score. It is more consistent than anything I have weighted out however, and if going by that then yes it is tops.

 

[notaglockfanboy]

The only complaint I have with the lapua is that right out of the box about 60 of the 100 cases had badly dented necks. A few of them I had to literally take a pair of needle nosed pliers and straighten them before running them through the neck sizer. Other than that, all the flash holes are perfect inside and out. I am not shooting for points in a competition but am going for steel at 1000. I bought them because everything I have read on them points to longevity and consistency, and I could not find any Winchester brass anywhere.

 

[MrBorland]

I use 5.56 LC brass for my Service Rifle, but have some Lapua on hand, so I did a little experiment today.

First, I weighed them, as a rough measure of relative case capacity. Not surprisingly, Lapua is about 4% heavier than LC (ave = 6.20 vs 5.94 grams, respectively), indicating about 4% less powder capacity (assuming a direct relationship between case weight and capacity), or about a grain.

I then loaded some Lapua and LC cases identically, using my standard SR load (77gr SMKs over RL-15, and CCI BR primers), chrono'd them, and found the Lapua cases ran 47 fps faster than the LC cases (2,632 vs 2585 fps, respectively).

Using Nosler's load data as a guide, I calculate a 47 fps gain is akin to adding an extra 0.4gr of powder to LC cases.

Even in Lapua brass, my load load is within max, but if you're at max before using Lapua brass, using it will likely take you over. Also, I didn't check to see if the extra fps affected accuracy, but if switching to Lapua, I might (or might not) have to make some adjustments.

 

[notaglockfanboy]

Thank you for the info. I have not been able to get to the range to test any loads in the lapua brass yet. I am planning to start from scratch and work my way up to max, or whatever the rifle likes.