Purchasing ammo now for brass use later....

[KR24]

Holding off on reloading until I can learn a bit more. My question is what ammo should I invest in now that will have good reusable brass later?

.308 win and 5.56 NATO

Seems like jumping on some ammo deals this Black Friday instead of a reload kit is the way I'm going.

Thanks.

 

[afrancke]

Re: Purchasing ammo now for brass use later....

I will assume for the sake of this answer that you are shooting a semi-auto (e.g. AR pattern) and intend to reload for same. Lake City, PMC and Prvi Partizan are all good to reload for 5.56 in my experience, though one caution: reloading military brass (Lake City and Prvi green-tip) requires removing the crimp around the circumference of the primer pockets, which is an extra step you wouldn't have to do with virgin brass. I would highly, highly advise that if you are buying ammo to reload brass - buy all one brand, and buy it all at once. Don't buy one of each kind; you want to have as much of a single headstamp as you possibly can for reloading purposes, since die setup and case capacity will vary among your case types and since you are going to be reloading these over and over, setting up your sizing die slightly differently for each make is a pain you want to avoid.

For 308 I have no experience with factory ammo.

If you are going to shoot from a bolt gun, I'd advise virgin brass to start with, and good brass at that. The brass from factory ammo as I've described above is seldom the best.

 

[KR24]

Re: Purchasing ammo now for brass use later....

Yes they are AR pattern rifles. Thanks.

 

[kansas]

Re: Purchasing ammo now for brass use later....

I think that the Lake City is fine brass. I shoot 3 gun so picking up range brass after a shoot is a mixed bag. Mixed head stamp at the best. If I shoot factory fodder through my AR15 then it is Federal American Eagle. It shoots good and it's the cheapest factory ammo I can find and I'm probably not going to get my own brass back after a match anyway. The AE brass I shoot here at home reloads fine.
On .308 I shoot a bolt gun and shoot Lapua but in a semi auto and factory I've heard that Winchester is as good as any and better than most. Unfortunately I've just bought 1000 rounds of Federal Gold Medal used before I did all my research and I don't think that it will give me as many loadings as the Winchester brass. Live and learn.

 

[leadbullet]

Re: Purchasing ammo now for brass use later....

winchester first then load those up.

 

[Beef82]

Re: Purchasing ammo now for brass use later....

5.56 LC/Federal, Hornady, or Winchester. LC/Fed generally most affordable, does require some extra prep, you'll find some Hornady crimped too.

.308 Hornady not Superformance, Nosler, or Winchester. I've found Hornady Match and Nosler Custom cases very consistent in all dimensions and I'm on my seventh or eighth loading, annealed once, no issues, I don't habitually exceed or load right at max, but not far from it. Superformance had pretty loose primer pockets at the first reload, that stuff is HOT from the factory. I've not used Win but it has a pretty long standing rep.