Hornady Brass

[DesertDiesel]

Do any of you have experience with Hornady Custom brass. I am reloading for my son's 7mm-08 and I can get Hornady Custom or Federal brass for a great price. Just wondering what you'd recommend.

 

[41mag]

I use Hornady dies for about 95% of the rifles I load for, and have had great results with them. For the price and for hunting rifles I find them hard to beat. Some folks prefer the Lee, some Wilson, and so forth, but are generally shooting custom rifles. I am generally loading for off the shelf rifles and most of the loads I have worked up in them will shoot tighter than I can hold them.

I have used Federal cases in a couple of rifles and found them to work fine for most mid ranged loads. If I am knowingly going to work towards a top end load however, I will generally try to get hold of Winchester cases. I haven't loaded for a 7-08 but do load on both sides of it in .243 and .308, and in both cases I have a few loads which do well Rem, Win, or Fed cases. The main thing is to keep them trimmed and sized accordingly. I have generally lost them in the field before wearing them out.

 

[kraky]

I've used the Hornady custom brass in my 300 wby mag. It used to be real competitively priced. All I did with the brass was bump the case mouth with an expander ball to make sure it was round and then chamfer and load. All seating tension seemed extremely consistant and runnout was very low. I thought I had found the "holly grail" of brass. BUT, the brass was extremely soft and primer pockets went to heck on loads that I consider medium at worst. 180's loaded to 3225fps will only last about 3 loadings while rem and wby brass last forever.
Now for the icing on the cake. Testing for accuracy in a fussy 300 wby ul I found that the hornady brass seemed to consistantly shoot better than the rem or wby brass. SO, I've actually bought a bit more when on sale. I shoot it once or twice and then the brass is loaded for hunting purposes. Once the hunting loads are shot....that's it.....I toss em.
So...I guess I'm happy with it for what I use it for....I wouldn't recomend it for lots of load testing or plinking but I sure like it's consistancy for hunting use.

 

[Ahab]

I load 7mm08 and have used Hornady brass when on sale. I do prefer Winchester. I found the Hornady primer pockets will open up after 5-6 loadings.

 

[beartooth]

I load 7mm08 and have used Hornady brass when on sale. I do prefer Winchester. I found the Hornady primer pockets will open up after 5-6 loadings.

I found standard rounds of Winchester brass to open up the primer pockets after the first and for sure the second firing if my accurate load ended up any where near a max book published load.

 

[Browninglover1]

I have 5 loadings in my 6.5 creedmoor brass and the primer pockets are as tight as day one.

 

[jasent]

No experimce with hornady custom brass but before I started loading I shot strictly horandy in my 243. saved all my brass and when I started loading I used that once fired brass. I had to debut flash holes and trim and sort but I started with 2 50 lots. I'm still loading those same lots. One of the lots is my fav bullet for this gun and have loaded them now 86 times(with regular annealing)with no troubles,i.e. split necks, loose primer pockets,ECT. I love this brass and so does my gun. FYI this fav load is 8% over max listed load,no pressure sings.

 

[MudRunner2005]

Do any of you have experience with Hornady Custom brass. I am reloading for my son's 7mm-08 and I can get Hornady Custom or Federal brass for a great price. Just wondering what you'd recommend.

I load for my 7mm-08 with old Hornady & Federal brass I had in a big bag from back when I shot pre-boxed ammo.

Of the 2, I prefer Federal, but Hornady is also good stuff. I can give you a pretty stout load data for 140gr Accubonds, if you'd like? Works good in my old Ruger 77 mountain rifle, so might need tweaking to be perfect for your gun. Just let me know if you want it, and I'll post it up.