I promised myself I was only going to read this. but now here I am writing my experiences and thoughts on modestly priced versus premium brass. My brass consists of mil-surp all the way up to Lapua. I have put in the time on the mil-surp to make M-14 match brass. nothing could be better but it took me 2 years to complete the 3,500 pieces of brass. My rifle has never shot so good in it's life. My hunting and target/match brass consists of stuff I picked up off the range, to Lapua brass weighed then volumed/CC'ed and other such stuff. the best hunting brass I ever had was a handful of Norma that a guy gave me because I owned a 270 Win and he had been carrying around the brass for years. I now have another 400 rounds of Norma brass for my 270's. those original 50 pieces of brass now are retired due to wearing off the head stamp from being reloaded untold times (annealed ever 2 to 3 reloadings) the best match brass has been that mil-surp I match prepped. but a very close second has been Nosler brass. I weighed the stuff, CC'ed them and found them to be so tight in their weights that I did not barely have to do anything to them. I should mention the bulk of my hunting brass is Hornady. it has served me well over the last 30 years. once brass has been fired once the odd stretching, the odd weight irregularities and the prepping is done Hornady is just as good as many much higher priced brass. the problem is that Hornady does not last as long as Nosler, Norma, Lapua, and whomever makes Barnes head stamped brass.
the work I put in on the brass I use for match versus the higher price I could have bought sometimes is a wash.
I will say this; the higher priced brass I have is stellar. the lower priced stuff I have once they are prepped can be just about as good. my 300 win just got a boat load of brass since I had all this missmatched and funky stuff done to it. I now have all one head stamp and yesterday proved to me that my long held belief that missmatched head stamps could shoot better or as good as all the same was proven false.
the best advice I give on this subject is how much work do you wish to put into your brass. you can buy your way out of some of it, but you can't buy your way out of all of it. my M-14 is a fun gun, my IDPA pistols are fun guns, my defensive pistols I depend my life on, my hunting rifles put food on my plate, my match rifles well they are my stress release. I take my gun accuracy seriously.. but not too seriously. I love making my hunting rifles shoot as good as most match rifles. I like making my comp pistils function flawlessly..
brass is a part of those guns doing what I want/demand of them. you choose how much work the bras will be, you choose how much you demand of your weapon's systems. at this moment, I am so far behind on brass prep I probably will never get done. I shoot still with up prepped brass. yesterday was an eye opener. I have to consider myself lucky that the brass was great, the loads were great, the projos were what Iw as testing out.. the 200 grainers for the 300 win mag failed miserably. no more debates about whether a 200 grain slug will stabilize in a 1:10" twist. they don't. new 1:8" twist barrel time.
