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Brass weight sorting

mtang45

Tangbladicus Maximus
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Minuteman
  • Apr 14, 2006
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    Kansas City, Missouri
    I'm sorting some Federal 308 brass and I am curious what weight ranges everyone else sorts into. This brass weighs between 174 and 178 gr. I've been separating in 1gr groups. Am I being too narrow in my grouping?

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    The middle of that range is 176. Using 176 as the middle, 174-178 is just over plus or minus 1%.

    An interesting experiment would be to shoot them in groups of 1 grain increments and see if you can tell the difference in poi.
     
    Another interesting thing to do is measure the actual case volume of your fired brass, and see how much difference there actually is in capacity by H2O weighing, will tell you a lot more then just the weight will.
    And 1 grain increments is quite standard.
     
    Weighing and sorting brass is just another obsessive mundane task that yields rewards that cannot be measured. Think about all the time you will spend sorting, then going to the range and shooting the sorted brass in groups, keeping track of the brass you sorted, cleaning everything separately, etc.
     
    At shorter ranges you will not really notice but it will rear its ugly head further out.

    I'd be inclined to use the 75,76, and 77 and use the 74 and 78 for SHTF ammo or plinking ammo or whatever you want to do with it. Generally you only need to weight sort brass that is multiple year or multiple lots of manufacture or if you are really anal about your groups.

    Case volume is the important part but big pain in the ass to do every case.. For the most part, the weight difference will be in capacity.

    I don't shoot a lot of 308 other than in a couple AR10 clones I have, does not have enough balls for me so 5 grains may be fine or 300 yards... My rifles for serious LR work are 30-06 and above and I sort to a maximum difference of 2 grains because I do notice a difference. To me, any paper between holes in 100 yard groups is a crappy group and I can not achieve that with brass that is all over the place weight wise.

    Brass within 2 grains, individually weighed charges from powder of the same lot, bullets from the same lot, match grade primers from the same lot, equals ES and SD numbers in the low single digits. Essential for long range work.
     
    Thanks for all the input. I am anal about group size and making it smaller, however I also dislike mundane tasks that make little or no difference. I'll probably go ahead a load these in the 1gr groups and run a test to see if there is any change at the target end.

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    I am not one to weight sort, but I did do some weights yesterday to get water volume for quickload.

    One peculiar thing I found when comparing Lapua and Remington, the Lapua mean case weight was 176.36 and SD of .68 (only 6 random cases fired in same rifle as RP), the RP was 170.85 with an SD of 1.0

    The volumes, however, had the Lapua at 57 grains of h20 with an SD of .78 and the RP at 57.58 with an SD of .32


    Now I did not cherry pick anything just grabbed 6 of each case, all with WLR fired primers. My sample size is small but off the cuff, had RP ahead with closer case volume.

    Just an observation
     
    Enormous waste of time unless you shoot BR matches, I still think nobody can shoot the difference, I know I cannot.
     
    I'm one of the people who used to weigh and sort bullets and brass. I gave it up, because when shooting from improvised field positions, it didn't show enough improvement in accuracy to be worth the effort. If you were shooting world class bench rest, then it would show enough accuracy to be worth the work. But I just couldn't justify it.

    However, that being said, it is an interesting thing to do as it teaches reloaders quite a bit about their components and how they interact. Once that is learned, I had to decide if getting one eighth of an inch improvement, or less (at 100 yards) from the bench was really worth all the extra time and effort. If you are looking for something to do, then it would be worthwhile.

    There are so many other factors that effect accuracy that can be over looked that will negate any improvement gained from weight sorting. For example, if you don't anneal brass, and one case has more neck tension than another in the lot, you will get pressure and accuracy variations that negate all that weight sorting....and that is only one of many possible factors.
     
    Hi, here’s something to consider – if you take two cases that you might reject that weigh exactly the same, squash one flat in a vice, they will still weigh exactly the same although the inside volume will be completely different. The only viable way to sort cases (if you really need to) is by volume and then you’re into the very N’th degree of BR shooting – not really necessary for almost all shooters. Your time would be better spent on all the other aspects of precision loading and shooting. Hope this is of some help.
     
    I don't know that I would say weighing brass is useless. It might show you some real outliers if there are any. Having individuals that are a lot heavier or lighter than the majority might be less likely with Lapua or Norma than with some lesser brands. I don't know this as I have never weight sorted brass. I do agree that measuring the volume would be the best way to sort it. The question is, would it show up on target?

    I did weigh 160 loaded rounds of .308 Win in Lapu brass. The brass was not weight sorted before loading. They ranged from about 407 gr to 410 grains. If you take 408.5 as the mid range, that is plus or minus 1/2%. I think I can live with that.
     
    The only viable way to sort cases (if you really need to) is by volume and then you’re into the very N’th degree of BR shooting

    Not if they were all fired in the same gun......
     
    I did that once.
    .1gr increments.


    Did you do that at the post office? It looks like the postage measurer on the P.O. counter tops!

    Hi, here’s something to consider – if you take two cases that you might reject that weigh exactly the same, squash one flat in a vice, they will still weigh exactly the same although the inside volume will be completely different. The only viable way to sort cases (if you really need to) is by...

    ...what?...squishing them? You know, I hope, that cases are supposed to be prepared to the same external dimensions before weight sorting!


    There are so many other factors that effect accuracy that can be over looked that will negate any improvement gained from weight sorting.

    Negate? Do variables really only cancel eachother out? Hardly. Just as often the variables work WITH eachother in compound to open up your groups. Everything that can reasonably be done to eliminate variables will produce the most precise ammunition. It's just a matter of deciding what constitutes "reasonably". To any one only shooting a gas gun, or only out to 500 yards, weight sorting may not make enough difference to justify. This being "Sniper's Hide", though, I'm surprised more here are not able to recognize or appreciate the advantage of weight sorting.
     
    Negate? Do variables really only cancel eachother out? Hardly. Just as often the variables work WITH eachother in compound to open up your groups. Everything that can reasonably be done to eliminate variables will produce the most precise ammunition. It's just a matter of deciding what constitutes "reasonably". To any one only shooting a gas gun, or only out to 500 yards, weight sorting may not make enough difference to justify. This being "Sniper's Hide", though, I'm surprised more here are not able to recognize or appreciate the advantage of weight sorting.

    My point was that people can go to extensive effort weighing and measuring cases, bullets, and so on, only to destroy all that work with one stupid beginner's mistake such leaving a piece of tumbling media inside the flash hole then seating the primer in that case. There are all sorts of stupid mistakes that a person who isn't careful can make, and any one of those mistakes can cancel, negate, or otherwise ruin all their meticulous detail work in weighing, sorting, measuring to ogive, length of bearing surface and so on.

    If a reloader isn't careful about the entire process, one mistake can ruin lots of hard work.
     
    I did 600 once and the bell curve always looks the same. Imagine all that brass mixed up,and loaded properly with your best load. Then you just happen to fire the lightest piece and the heaviest piece consecutively. You would be wondering where that vertical came from, and adjust your setting, then BAM! Your next shot is crap as well. When in fact you just made three good shots. It is not the minor differences that make it worth it. It is the major irregularities that can show up,at the wrong moment.
    YMMV- Rob
     
    Time was a major factor in my decision to not weight sort cases, bullets, and then sort bullets by bearing surface length. Simply put I chose to put my time into other things. Although I do find reloading to be fun, interesting, and the precision challenging, there are many other activities that I also enjoy. After going through all that work a number of times, and feeling that I didn't get sufficient benefit from all the extra work, I decided to quit doing it.

    I still do quite a bit of initial case prep whenever I get a new lot of brass, but that is a one time thing, and annealing has to be done to maintain consistent case neck tension and keep necks from cracking. A large part of my decision is because I am not a competitive bench rest, or F-class shooter. In those disciplines, the benefit has a greater return for the shooter because they can spend enough time on each shot to realize the benefit of weight sorting. When shooting from field type conditions, under very tight time constraints, and unusual positions, there isn't enough time for me to spend on a shot as I think would be required for ME to realize the benefits of weight sorting.

    The ammunition produced by reloaders willing to spend the time doing all the steps that are possible yields very high quality ammunition. I don't think there is any dispute regarding that. I just don't get enough return for the time investment. If I was rich, it would be great to have ammunition of that high quality, but I'm not there yet either.
     
    A lot of good points made in this discussion. My purpose in going through this process is simply to reduce as much variation as I can. What I absolutely hate is going through a lot of tedious prep work in the never ending obsessive quest for better accuracy, only to have a random flier destroy an otherwise great group.

    Brass sorting was the next area of focus for a newly built 308 that I have not discovered the zone yet. That being said, the concensus pretty much seems to be that it's a waste of time and that volume is much more important. So I'm going to do a volume comparison between the 174gr and 178gr and then load them up equally and do a 174 vs 178 shootout. I'll let everyone know the results on Friday if the weather holds out.

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    Depending on the application, .10g batches of 50 if possible.
    .20 spread on most other brass batches
     
    Once I decided to sort my Lapua .308 brass. I first sorted by case weight. I took the batch which was +\- .5 grs and checked the water capacity. To my amazement, the heaviest case held almost a full grain more water than the lightest case!!!
     
    Waste of time. Time better spent shooting. Weigh your powder charge only and use quality components and you will be fine.
     
    I trickle each charge when using stick type powder. I measure length to ogive, as overall length has too much variation for the consistency I am looking for.

    After doing all the initial prep work of trimming to length, insuring all cases have the same number of firings (neck tension) between annealing, deburring flash holes, uniforming primer pockets and flash holes (cases for 6.5 Grendel had various sized flash holes), my greatest improvement in accuracy came from sorting loaded rounds by bullet runout. Anything with .0015 and less runout is very accurate, then I sort by .001 each. As runout increases, accuracy decreases. .004 and more is only for practice as groups can easily go from .3 moa to 1.3 moa just by having more runout.
     
    I went to the range today to run the little 178 vs 174 gr test as promised. Weather was great temperature-wise but a little windy. The results are posted below. To make sure that all cases were as identical as possible except for the weight, they were tumbled, annealed, FL resized, trimmed to length and the necks turned to .014". After all that the 178gr cases now weighed 175.2 and the 174gr cases weighed 171.1. I dropped in a standard FGMM load of 41.7gr IMR4064 and seated 175gr SMK to an OAL of 2.81".

    Target was at 100 yards and I see absolutely nothing that would be remarkable about the difference between the two cases ans far as POI or group size. I did notice my rifle was gradually shifting the group down as I shot...but thats a different problem.

    Velocities between the two case weights:

    178gr - group 1, (top left) 2544, 2530, 2539 group 2 (bottom left) 2539, 2539, 2539 - I don't know if this was really that good or my chrony got tired and was lying.

    174gr - group 1, (top right) 2525, 2525, 2515 group 2 (bottom right) 2520, 2530, 2539

    Case capacity after firing was:

    178gr - 55.0gr water
    174gr - 55.7gr water

    Not much of a difference between the two. At extreme range it may make a noticible difference, but I don't plan on using these anywhere it would make that much of a difference.

    Thanks for the input everyone.
     

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    Not much of a difference between the two. At extreme range it may make a noticible difference, but I don't plan on using these anywhere it would make that much of a difference.

    Considering the lighter group (larger internal capacity) showed a markedly lower average velocity than the heavier group, I'd say at extreme (even mid-) range it WOULD make a noticable difference. Thanks for sharing your test and results.
     
    Sometimes you don't see the difference when mixed with human error. Not saying you are a bad shooter but when a person can hold 1/4 MOA, that is when you really see the difference.

    The problem with your test was, you had sorted your brass and shot the same weight for each group.

    Now do a test where you mix the two different weights together and shoot a 6 shot group. You will most likely see two distinct groups of 3. If you dont, then your load has not been optimized for your gun or you are not a very good shot.

    In all my load testing, I never, ever shoot 3 shot groups. 3 shots is not enough to come up with a good statistical average. The reason most people like to shoot 3 shots in a group is it gives them a better chance of having a better grouping to feel good about whereas 5 shots does much better at telling you what is really going on. When I am on the range, the only person I am lying to when I cut corners is myself. If I want to be truthful about a particular load then 5 is the absolute minimum and then when I have found a good load I confirm it with a group of 10.

    This is the benefit of weight sorting brass and optimizing a load... this is a 10 shot group with 190 grain VLD's in a 30-06 smoking at 2950 FPS. I can hit a 10" piece of steel at 1000 yards 10 times consecutively with this load unless the weather is screwing with me.

    190vld.jpg

    If you are dropping 1 MOA after your barrel starts to warm up after 3 shots then you must have a very light weight barrel, and yes, that is going to be a whole different set of problems and keep that gun from ever doing any long range work past a couple of shots.
     
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    I would agree it is a waste of time to shoot steel and close range work. If you are shooting 1000 yards for score and cannot see a difference, you have other issues.
    Rob
     
    I was sorting brass 12 years ago and gave it up.
    If it has any effect, I could not measure it.

    I started noticing a difference over a period of time based on using the same lot of brass that started out as factory loaded ammo. So, I reloaded a lot of 100 .308 FGMM brass and sorted by weight. These came from the same lot of loaded factory ammo. I reloaded them 10+ times including trimming over an extended period of time. Rounded to the nearest 1/0th grain, the standard deviation of the brass was 1.6 grains. Fully reloaded, the ammo had a SD of 1.6 grains. Out of curiosity more than scientific methodology (because it was in a middle of match), I took 5 rounds close to the mean and took 5 that weighed the most. At 550 yards there was a tendency for the heavier ammo to shoot about 3" higher than the average weight ammo. I generally shoot about 1/2 moa accuracy so there is a shooter error rate built in. BTW, I measured the SD for .308 FGMM factory ammo and it was .7 grains for a box of 20. I'm leaning towards saying this lot of reloaded brass has reached end of life even though the brass looks fine. Naturally, it would very expensive and time consuming to complete repeated tests to confirms this. But I've seen enough for me.

    EDIT: The bullet for reloaded ammo is the same bullet for the factory FGMM.
     
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    Should have led off with - I shoot 300.500, 600 yard F Class with Rem 700 PSS in .308, 168 gr SMK, Varget powder, Fed Lg BR primers.
    So AM looking for some advantage on groups....

    While I would agree .1 is a bit much I have grouped my cases by general weight.
    Bunch of Federal Match 1x fire brass (some 3-4 now)

    some batches (older) about 150 total were 164gr +/- 4 grain, the next large group was 180gr +/- 5 grains...

    Regardless of 'it doesn't matter' I think the diff between 164gr and 185gr case would be noticeable. will probably try the water fill test and see how much volume difference.

    Bullets. The 168gr SMK are a bit wierd in weights. vary from 167.5 to 168.5. Figure +/- .2/.3 out to 600 yards wont make much difference?

    Primer pockets? does everyone clean them out after every firing?
     
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    Yes I clean primer pockets each time.


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    Precision shooting is about elimination of variables. Some can be accounted for, some are differential, some are even more complex. So much so it's easier to just invoke shooting as an art rather than a science (while including science where possible). In other words, practice using different components.

    In absence of long, drawn out math and computer models, your best bet is to eliminate these variables qualitatively.

    For bulk ammo I store, I use once fired brass and I don't weight components. They are expected to be 2MOA or less on average. I match headstamps and watch QC and that's it.

    With math ammo or critical ammo, I weigh each bullet, each case, each powder dump and I measure the OAL of every round. Mic. dies for all of this. No error in ammo, sub MOA is the goal, depending on the rifle. The only thing I neglect is the warming of components like the Marine Marksmanship Unit does --I don't have the ability. I do, however, load to nearly the exact same specs and processes the Marines use. They are VERY anal and tailor ammo to the weapons system.

    So it depends. For accuracy, no corners cut. Load specific rounds for specific weapons, test and work up further. Fodder loads are simply the brass and bullet weights that don't optimize in the weapon generally loaded for, ie, the ones weeded out during weighing.
     
    Thanks very much for the overview and the specifics. For general shooting or plinking I don't bother. bulk bullets, Dillon 550B for primer, powder, etc. Close enough for .223 reloading.
    Trying to tighten up for the F Class as mentioned.
    I have seen my Rem 700 PSS shoot sub-moa groups with FedGMM 168gr. (How the heck do they do load like that?) Not that experienced a long range shooter, but working on it.
    Working on the loads with the parameters mentioned above and 1x using fire formed FC match brass from my Fed GMM firings.
    Results? 100 yds - right at 1.0 or .9 moa. Trying to standardize loads for the distance shooting.
    Weighing the bullets to .1 grain. Unfortunately found the Sierra 168 gr matchkings from Brownells to run from 167.5 to 168.5 grains.
    Bulk of the 500 round batch centers from 167.8 to 168.3, probably not a match killer at 600 yds. Still, after sorting 500 rounds have enough of one weight to use it for the match.
    I reamed the primer pockets, then clean then after each firing.
    OAL? - I used the average OAL of 40 Fed GMM 168gr rounds. I hear seating long will give better moa, but am not that advanced.
    Reading what the expereinced LR shooter do, trying to copy that.
    I also dont have the warming stuff the Marines use...

    Thanks very much for the reply!
     
    I'm also a relative new student of longer range shooting/reloading and thoroughly enjoyed the above comments. I've got several mentors who are experienced BR shooters, whereas I prefer a more tactical style. I've been weighing brass, measuring bullets ogive to base, as well as weighing, and have had marginal improvement over reloads versus where I haven't taken all the time consuming measures practiced by bench rest shooters. My 308 rifles are pretty much rack grade but I can usually shoot a little less than 1 MOA at 400 yards with both the bolt gun (Savage 110 FP) and the Rock River LAR-8 using my reloads. I'm not quite sure if any reloading improvements will improve accuracy considering my rifles. I'm at a point where I want to reach out farther, and this may identify which element needs the most improvement -- the reloading or the rifles. Anyway, thanks again for all the experience shared on Sniper's Hide -- it's very much appreciated.
     
    Are you shooting these in that whiz bang 1000yd BR rifle Dave Tooley built you? No?

    You are wasting precious shooting time, a far more valuable developer of putting a shot in the right spot!
     
    I sort my benchrest brass and my long range brass. NOTHING ELSE. I used to sort everything. I decided to stop all but where it actually made a difference.

    Good luck.