Weight sorting brass

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I have been working up a load for a 6.5 creed Tikka and I’ve been using once and twice fired Hornady brass, H4350 and Hornady 140 BTHP match and 143 ELD-X bullets.

Im having trouble getting the accuracy I would like, I’m right at 1moa sometimes a little under, low 30s ES and mid-low teens SD. A buddy with the same rifle and components is doing better with Virgin Lapua brass. Im on the search for some and I’ll buy 200-300 when I can find it.

I started to think my brass could be an issue and so I weight sorted ~175 2x fired cases. The results were surprisingly bad. Weights from 146gr to 154gr. I sorted by grain and will proceed with the -100 cases in the 151/152/153 groups.

Is this typical for Hornady brass?

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brad407210

Lil-Rokslider
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That seems a little worse than I've seen, but Hornady is known to have a big spread in this department. I like to use this process to cull out the outliers on either end, then use those for pressure testing or blasting. My thought process has been that if I'm at safe pressure levels with a heavy and a light case, anything in between should be fine. I throw any cases that showed pressure signs then what's left goes into a pile for screwing around with. I used to think I needed to wait to weight sort 1x brass after sizing and trimming, but the "good" thing is that Hornady varies so much that you can do the cull with unfired brass, I think trimming 0.003" is about 1/10th gr. so unless you're getting better brass I wouldn't bother going through that hassle with Hornady.
 
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I shoot a pile of Hornady brass in my 6.5 CMs, mixed between 1x, 2x, and 3x, haven't kept track and never weighed any of it... the rifles shoot excellent with 41.5 gr of H4350, 143 ELD-X at 2.232" BTO (a T3X and a Hawkeye FTW). I'll look at some brass later and let you know.

Recently picked up some Lapua Brass, haven't tried it out yet, though. Think I got it from Midway but Natchez has some now. Good luck!

 
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What sizing and seating dies are you using and what’s your process? How are you measuring OAL? It’s probably more to due with neck tension and variances in neck thickness but since you already sorted them I would stick to those weights you chose.
 
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Slugz

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Take this for what its worth....just another opinion of a guy on the interweb.....a fair amount of the literature from precision shooting guys have this line of thought.

If you are gonna weigh and sort then do it by
1) shooting it
2) trim neck all same length
3) OD perfect on all cases

Then weigh it.

I buy in to more of it maybe being a neck tension issue. Hornady in my experience ( and other softer brass) needs annealed. Additionally collecting data on your brass before its shot dimensions and weight. OAL , shoulder length, diameter at a few spots. Then you can see how it grew after shot. I think it all depends alot on what you wanna get out of your gun group size wise.

To get all three touching, neck tension and OD I think are critical. Gotta go down the road also of what the consistent capability of the rifle is.

Lastly give Sam Millard a listen from Pan Handle Precision, you may be able to tease a tidbit out of his info

Hope that helps.
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OP
PantherCity
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What sizing and seating dies are you using and what’s your process? How are you measuring OAL? It’s probably more to due with neck tension and variances in neck thickness but since you already sorted them I would stick to those weights you chose.

Redding Type S FL bushing die - (.289 bushing I believe)

Forester micrometer seating die.

My reloading procedure:
Deprime
Wet tumble (no pins)
Lube
Resize
Wipe off lube
Trim (forester trimmer and sort out cases that have a tight neck fit on the mandrel)
Chamfer (hand tool)
Prime (Co-Ax priming tool)
Imperial neck lube
Drop powder (RCBS charge master)
Seat bullets
Shoot

Measured distance to lands with Hornady coal tool & modified case and I use a bullet comparator for seating depth.

All of this has been with once fired brass from factory Hornady ammo.


A lot of the gear I got from my dad and is what we used to load with good results on when I was a kid 20+ years ago. I have updated things like scales, dies, wet tumbler etc, but my priming tool and RCBS rockchucker 2 and case trimmer are going strong and I see no need to update.

I got back into handloading for rifle last winter and thought I would play around with Hornady brass until I had a good understanding of what other equipment and components I would need to invest in.

I’ve been loading lots of 9mm on a Dillon 650 for years. I used to shoot 1000rds a month of pistol when I was really into USPSA and 3-gun before I had kids. But that has slowed down in the last 5 years with 3 kids under 5yo.


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Sounds like your reloading process is good. I assume the imperial neck lube is the dry lube.
Do you have any other bushings?
Have you tried more/less neck tension?
Have you measured neck thickness?
How did you determine your charge weight?
What seating depth tests have you done?
 
OP
PantherCity
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Ok, I think I’m just going to buy some of the small primer lapua brass that is available now. It’s one more variable I can eliminate.

I was just surprised how much variation there was in this brass. I’ve seen other treads online about guys sorting good brass into .10 gr brackets. I wouldn’t have expected an 8 gr distribution of case weight over 175 cases.


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OP
PantherCity
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Waste of time, it isn't your problem.

Than what is my problem? How should I spend my time?

It took all of 30 min to weight sort that on the bar on my living room.I was holding my 2 month old in my left hand while I did it. It wasn’t exactly an high effort operation. I feel I learned something, not sure what yet.


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Just grabbed five random pieces of primed Hornady 6.5, looks like you’re not seeing anything unusual. Shoots great for me though so I’ve never thought to check. Here was a 4 shot check before letting my niece hunt with it this past March. I’ve got two boxes of the fancy stuff but haven’t loaded any yet.
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4ester

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Ok, I think I’m just going to buy some of the small primer lapua brass that is available now. It’s one more variable I can eliminate.

I was just surprised how much variation there was in this brass. I’ve seen other treads online about guys sorting good brass into .10 gr brackets. I wouldn’t have expected an 8 gr distribution of case weight over 175 cases.


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If your gonna go small primer I’d recommend you run a 450 magnum. Good brass will around 1 grain spread in mid size cases.


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4ester

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I have had some pretty bad variation with Nosler brass and when I called them they said it was normal.

Same response as when you find their bullets have .030 ogive variance…..Nosler makes good short range hunting bullets but can’t hold the tolerances for long range stuff. The new RDF they say is better……


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Lawnboi

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Tell us more about your rifle as well?

Iv loaded now for 3 factory tikka 6.5cm barrels. If your getting 1moa or a bit less your doing something right. I have played around with my loads enough to say that it just isn’t a bartlein barrel cut by a good smith. It’s a factory barrel with a factory chamber. You could mess around trying to squeeze .25” out of your group, or you could load some ammo and go learn your gun off the bench.

Just my 2 cents.

Another thing to remember; this is the internet. All these cutout targets are probably of guys best groups. Best cherry picked groups with cherry picked ES SD numbers are not showing what a rifle will really do. And here we are talking hunting rifles, not benchrest and match rifles.
 
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