Not used to the gd stuff here. Should have known.

Fantastic thread and I can only echo those others that have thanked you for your hard work.

Boman, You want any Wolf brass to play with?  I will send you some if you are interested.

Pm sent.

I don't know if this is toggled to stay out of the archives, so a bump for life.

I appreciate the bump.

I don't have an update to the test yet. My kids are with me for the summer and we have been too busy doing family stuff to go load and shoot an experiment.

I will do my best to shoot these at 300 yards when the time comes and post the results.

I did receive a large number of Wolf gold brass from billyhill and plan on repeating the test similarly with it. Thanks again billyhill!

No problem Boman, no hurries. Enjoy your family. I was just trying to keep it out of the archives. @dryflash3, could we get this one toggled to stay out of the great beyond?

Thanks dryflash!

Hope you don't mind me digging into this thread a bit, but it seems to be somewhat pertinent if talking consistency...I've not been able to do the shooting tests as you have, but I did get a fair number (1000's) of 7.62 LC12 that were commercially processed. Sized, primer pockets swaged, trimmed, cleaned.

For developing loads, I figured it best to sort brass by weight to make sure that I didn't end up with a max load in a light case being over-pressure in a heavier casing. I'd heard they were pretty inconsistent on weight, as best as possible same headstamp should eliminate at least one variable.

All of them were between 177 and 182grs. Not sure how good a 3% variation is in brass weight, but that's what it was. The vast majority fell within a 2% weight variation range, 178-181grs.

Last I had it done I could get commercial places to process brass (5.56) for around $45/1000, *IMO* well worth the cost, but that's a cost/time justification. to me it is relatively cost effective to let someone else do all the hard parts with the .mil brass. Wouldn't be such a big deal if it wasn't thousands of casings, but I like having enough available that I'm not having to process often at all. Just throw all the once fired in buckets, when I've got enough to justify sending it in, I will. Just an idea if folks haven't considered that. Otherwise the .mil brass just takes a lot of work I consider tedious and better spent loading. :)

dyeager535, my test was mostly to see if the mixed years lake city brass I usually used for my more precision loads were better or worse than the thousands of WCC brass I had on hand. I could have changed many variables in the test, but I am happy with the results so far. I hope they are consistent at 300 yards.

I have never used a brass processing service and I have heard mixed reviews on quality and consistency from people who have. It doesn't make sense to me to not process my own for my rifles, especially precision stuff. But, my time is not as valuable as some. If my situation ever changes, I may pay for the blasting ammo brass to be processed, but I would still do my own for the accurate stuff.

See if you can get "new" military brass, IMI 308 was available a while back and may still be, Federal markets LC brass in bulk packs. No crimps on primers, no machine gun brass, no "processed" brass with .005+ run out at the neck and other issues. $0.20/each for LC (250 packs) 5.56, $0.32/per for IMI match 308 (by 1000)

Both are still available

It is about time for an update. My daughters went back to their mom on Wednesday, so, I spent a day drinking, then a day working, time for a new distraction. Reloading for a purpose.

I still have the original brass from the original test above. It was all sized, It did not need sizing as it was all below trim length, and it was clean. Time to check em out and load em up for the 300 yard test.

I ran a paperclip into them as they are on their 3rd firing. This next firing will be their 4th bang. None of them felt like they had any imminent case head separation coming on. Blue bin is the LC, yellow is the WCC

Attached File


So, I started with some twice fired LC that I use for my normal loads. This is my control group, I use them before and after the test to make sure the rifle is still shooting like it should. Had 45 pieces there and thought "Why not load them all?" Each charge for each round is hand weighed. It is time consuming. But whatever. I have nothing better to do.

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Then, after the last of my control group got loaded, I started feeding the test group. Each round was hand weighed just like before. I also alternated WCC and LC through just like before to be consistent.

The final product. I put 10 rounds in a California legal magazine to make room. Top 4 rows are the control (35 rounds), next 3 rows are the WCC (29 rounds) and bottom 3 rows are the LC (28 rounds). So pretty.

Attached File


Then, I started loading the next test that was requested. Lake City mixed years vs Wolf Gold 223. From here on out, they will be referred to as "LC" and "WG".

I started loading these right as I was finishing up the LC and WCC loading, but I took a few pictures of the brass prep for scientific purposes.

I decapped 31 pieces of each type randomly drawn from the pool of different brass headstamps. Why 31? well, I messed up 3 of the first test with a shoddy trimmer so I figured a little wiggle room couldn't hurt. Then into the wet tumbler they went.

Before
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After
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Interesting note, the decapping of the WG was very inconsistent. Some primers felt like they were welded into the pockets and others felt like they could have been blown out by a stiff wind. The LC was more consistent. Just an observation. More to come in the next post.

After the wet tumbler (not pictured) I decided to do the primer pockets as both are crimped. I tried to use less pressure as I was told I was over reaming them on the last test. Here is the results.

Attached File


Then, the cases were lubed and run through the 550. I decided to use the RT 1200 to reduced the amount of manual trimming I had to do. I am glad I did. RT 1200 cut them down to about 1.75. Here is the full stroke picture.

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Then, into the dry tumbler to get the lube off.

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Then, the final trim using the Triway trimmer (minus the deburring cutter, it's still chipped and I haven't replaced it)

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Final trim length. Plus every piece is uniformly camfered.

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The "Stuff" used for this test, just like the others. They looked so pretty there on the bench posing for me.

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Then, there were loaded up round robin like in the last test. In fact, they were loaded immediately after the last test to the same charge weight. One by One. Hand weighed each charge...
Like this:

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Here they are all done (in another case holder) (Disregard the top 3 rows. They are for a different rifle)
Bottom 3 rows are LC
Middle 3 rows are WG

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Will update this thread after I shoot them. I am considering skipping the 100 yard test as it did not give any clear advantage to either headstamp in the last test. But the 200 yard test did show a more clear winner.

What says the reloading forum?

I sized and processed all brass exactly the same per test batch. All rounds used the same lube and same equipment.

My goal is to minimize all variables in the test to determine if different brass headstamps are more accurate. Trickling up to the desired charge weight just gets rid of one variable, the thrown charge weight.

Went to the range today and tested some rounds. First, the 300 yard test on the original 2 brass types. As always, I shot a fowling group that was 5 rounds just under MOA at 100 yards to check weapon function and zero. Then, out to 300 I went.

Attached File


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Probably should have saved those files with a little more definition but the LC was winner again by a fraction of an MOA. The wind was pretty gusty in the canyon today. Might account for some of the horizontal dispersion. I did have 1 round of the LC get caught in the crappy 10 round cali legal magazine and it got stuffed into the case. I did not fire it.

This pretty much concludes my testing of the WCC vs the LC mixed years. I am certain that if I had sorted the LC by year, the results would have been even more drastic, but that was not the point of this test.

I am open to comments. And maybe the idea of someone else repeating this test with their equipment?

Next post will be the LC vs WG.

After I finished the above testing at 300, I decided to go ahead and verify accuracy and zero of the rifle at 200 yards. Got a sub MOA 5 round group after the 300 yard test at 200 yards. It was still shooting ok. The flyer to the bottom left may have been me.

Attached File


Again, I fired the rounds "round robin" alternating back and forth between each round. I went with 200 yards for the initial testing because the 100 yard test didn't show a difference last time. Saving components!

The LC

Attached File


The WG

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The LC was the winner again. Maybe I am subconsciously bias towards it and it affects my shooting. Obviously, these groups are not spectacular. I got a little rushed at the end as the last cease fire was coming up.

My scope is not a spectacular scope. Long shots are kinda tough sometimes. I believe the rifle is much more capable than I am. Thank you again @billyhill for the WG brass. I will do another test with it to verify the results.

@boman250

You are very welcome, You are doing me a favor. I have some RP and PMP brass if you are interested.

Haha, thanks but I may pass. I still have to test the WG against the LC again at 300, then I was thinking of testing the 2 LC lots against each other.

I also am considering testing my charge weight up a couple grains. and seeing if there is a node above where I tested when I did the initial load work up.

Oh the possibilities.

Emphasis in bold is mine.

Not to derail this thread, but I think I have been vocal enough about my concentricity issues with processed once fired LC .223 brass.

So much so that I bought some Federal XM855 and XM193 ammo and tested it on my high fallutin" concentricity gauge.  That was showing like 5, 6, or even more thousandths in runout.

And I don't even have a .308 Wichester rifle but I bought a box of Federal XM80 ammo anyway.

Yep, sure enough, that had runout issues too.

So if you have access to a concentricity gauge, you should check your "processed" brass for runout before you go all whole hog cranking out ammo with it.

I felt like bringing this thread back from the dead with a new twist on an old test.

I found the original test batch of lake city and wcc brass stores since last summer.  So, I annealed it, and it had been fired 3 times, resized and trimmed to length in a fashion similar to my original post.

Then,  as to try to gain more data, I changed the projectile to hornady 55g FMJBT and my go to blasting load of 24.5g of H335 and s&b small rifle primers while still using the exact same lot of brass for both headstamps.

Loaded on my 550b alternating them through the press. This time, I did not measure every charge, this is my blasting ammo after all.

The results are much more pronounced this time than they were with the 77g SMK.

Attached File


I have the chrono data as well this time. I will post that when I get home.

It's great work and thanks for posting it.

The question I have at this time is whether or not the information is generally applicable or whether the results are unique to you and your reloads?  Can anyone else reproduce these precise results or would their work have different results?

The answers are important to us because, if they are not reproducible, then what we get from the thread is your test method.  If the results are reproducible, then we have a method AND useful results.

Tell me about the wind conditions during the shooting.

One more question:  if you call a shot as "low left" and it lands low and left, right on call, do you include it in the measure of group size?  This is especially important to address when that called shot drives the group size.

I am interested because it was you who out it where it landed, you knew you did and it landed exactly where you thought you put it.  Does that make it a bad group (bad ammo)?  Is your test really just a test of shooter skill as influenced by the wind?

Velocity numbers:

Lake city:
Average 3120
Max 3207
Min 3045
SD 49.78

WCC:
Average 3107
Max 3182
Min 3013
SD 44.74

Overall, not very much difference in the 2 in terms of velocity numbers.

Ambient temp was about 70 degrees. Felt hotter as the sun was shining. Wind was blowing from left to right. The targets actually got shot upside down. So the titles were the bottom of the targets this time.

I did not call any shots. There were a few that did not feel perfect as I pulled the trigger, but they always landed somewhere in the middle of the group. So the call would have been impossible to determine. The outliers were never a called shot, they are the ones opening the groups considerably.

I agree that this test is only valid in my rifle and with me shooting. So I am happy to ship this 4x fired brass to someone to do another test of they would like to take the risk of 4x fired brass from someone else.

Or possibly another shooter wants some once fired wcc 14 to start their own test?

This comment prompted my question.  Also, when I test, I call all my shots and record my call before scoping the target.

That was good shooting, a great test and a great post.  Thanks for that.

Oh, that comment was from august I believe. I thought you were referring to this test I did today.

Deviation form point of aim is why sites are adjustable.
Standard deviation on distance from center of group would be better.
But even average deviation from center of group when they are that (relatively) large might be adequate.

The SD at least gives an indicator of the actual shape of the spread values.
It is designed to be more sensitive.