A sad day

That’s impressive.

I took a small lot of .270 Remington brass to 12 reloadings without annealing and then scrapped the lot thinking they owed me nothing.

Mordamer said:

I'm having to throw out some Lapua .223 Rem brass that I have loaded approximately 35 times each with a stiff load of Varget under a 75 Amax. Just think of all the hours I spent reloading on just this 100 pieces. I was able to lose only 2 in the 6 years I used the brass. I have annealed the brass about 5 times total including on the last reloading cycle. The brass necks are splitting and the annealing does not seem to help at this point. I had about 30 cases split necks in the last 2 firings and I'm going to scrap all of them. It is kind of sad throwing brass away that I have used this much. I never had a single case head seperation in this 100 pieces. It does feel good to know that the cost per round for this brass comes out to less than 1.5 cents after 35 firings.

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I’m assuming you were shooting a bolt gun. I bought a couple hundred Lapua years ago and used it in my precision AR. I lost the primer pockets on a good number of them after just a few firings

That is impressive. Try not to tear up too much when you think about them...

Sorry for your loss buddy, you will find new brass to share beautiful times with......

I believe the brass Lapua makes with the greatest longevity is their 338. There was a guy in Ohio who was shooting a caliber called 300 hulk, which is 338 necked to 300. He supposedly had the world record 1000 yd group and it was shot with brass with over 50 firings on it. 35 for 223 is really impressive given the hi pressures

5500 rounds on 200 pieces of brass.

mijp5 said:

I believe the brass Lapua makes with the greatest longevity is their 338. There was a guy in Ohio who was shooting a caliber called 300 hulk, which is 338 necked to 300. He supposedly had the world record 1000 yd group and it was shot with brass with over 50 firings on it. 35 for 223 is really impressive given the hi pressures

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That’s Tom Sarver’s cartridge. It starts out as .338 lapua brass but after much trimming and forming, ends up very similar to an improved 300 norma. Straight walls, steep shoulder, with custom dies and minimum tolerances make that possible.


Edit: Mordamer, with all those firings, just think of how cheap that Lapua brass ended up being! You beat the game, man!

Mordamer said:

I'm having to throw out some Lapua .223 Rem brass that I have loaded approximately 35 times each with a stiff load of Varget under a 75 Amax. Just think of all the hours I spent reloading on just this 100 pieces. I was able to lose only 2 in the 6 years I used the brass. I have annealed the brass about 5 times total including on the last reloading cycle. The brass necks are splitting and the annealing does not seem to help at this point. I had about 30 cases split necks in the last 2 firings and I'm going to scrap all of them. It is kind of sad throwing brass away that I have used this much. I never had a single case head seperation in this 100 pieces. It does feel good to know that the cost per round for this brass comes out to less than 1.5 cents after 35 firings.

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That's what I have on my 6x47L brass but it's still going strong.

If you want more life on the next batch of brass then buy your own minimum tolerance reamer and matched custom size die, requires a set back of course or get a new barrel. .003 neck expansion will subvert those split necks indefinitely.

My lapua 223 brass only lasted me about 10 firings for my 50 experiment cases unlike my old ass remington brass that for some reason wont give up the ghost after whats got to be 20 firings by now.

So Im saving the other half of that batch and another new box for my new pva barrel if it ever freaking comes.

spife7980 said:

My lapua 223 brass only lasted me about 10 firings for my 50 experiment cases unlike my old ass remington brass that for some reason wont give up the ghost after whats got to be 20 firings by now.

So Im saving the other half of that batch and another new box for my new pva barrel if it ever freaking comes.

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What was the failure?

Case heads started to separate.
Which I know points to oversizing but if anything I feel was undersizing because I tried for .001" setback and they were never loose chambering, always a tiny bit of resistance. Not hard but you could tell when there was a round in the chamber. I think it was just a looser chamber and the hard brass grew to far on the first firing and ultimately was behind the curve the rest of their live.

I want to put the other half of that batch through the PVA barrel and see I could find a difference in performance and then compare it to my newer lot and see if it could have been a lot problem. I had read that lapuas 223 offerings had been lacking lately on accurate shooter and I wanted to see if that was indeed the situation or if I just effed it up. Ive been waiting 5 months for that though, I figured my 223 remage barrel would have been run through quick while they were waiting on the john hancock stuff but turns out thats obviously not the case...

Just make sure you give them a proper send off, you owe them that much.?
Tough little suckers refused to give up.

Well, thats sad but also pretty impressive! I would say that you got your moneys worth!

i have been very happy with my 260 brass... i have 308 brass i bought on sale just to have, can't wait to use it

Mordamer said:

Factory Remington 700 5R Milspec. Still shoots great and I have a second 100 pieces of Lapua brass that are over 20 firings of the same load through the same gun and are going strong.

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I have the same rifle as you and mine will not shoot the 75 eld. Bullet never makes it to the target. Funny how every rifle is different.

How often did you anneal?