Different brands of brass shoot differently?

**jowi11** · January 22nd, 2010, 09:27 PM

My brother was reloading and shooting .243 Win with Winchester, Remington, and Federal brass. The Federal shot a 1-hole group with a stray; the Remington, acceptable; and the Winchester, poorly. All were loaded the same with CCI primers, H4350 powder and 100gr Rem. CorLokt bullets seated and crimped the same. Since I normally reload only one brand of brass per caliber, I never noticed the difference. But it could affect what brand I buy if some shoot better than others. Is this the result of a poor bench/shooter setup or is it possible that the brass shoots differently?

**Flash** · January 22nd, 2010, 09:52 PM

Let me take a shot at this:
Consider that the brass came from different lots, and may be vastly different, matallurgically speaking.

And was made on different machines.

In different plants.

To different specifications.

Has different internal dimensions.

....oh, we could go on.
BR shooters select brass from the same lot for greater consistency.

Shooter's technique will account for a bit of variation.

Flash

**Iron Sights** · January 22nd, 2010, 11:02 PM

Absolutely, I try to match the range brass I use, but I still feel a difference when reloading them.

**andrewjs18** · January 23rd, 2010, 04:31 PM

when I reload, I reload by headstamp...as others have said..each company has different case lengths.

**Pukindog** · January 23rd, 2010, 05:42 PM

This could be one reason for the difference in accuracy; why crimp? If you crimp and the brass is of different manufactures (same reasons Flash gave) the bras may have different tensile strenghts. May take more 'horsepower" so to speak to overcome the crimp on said rounds. Try and load all three manufactures again without the crimp and see what happens. There will still be some differences but accuracy may be acceptable with all three.

Jeff