Weight Sorting Brass

[BuckeyePrecision]

I have a couple quick questions about weight sorting brass and what practices are best. In the past I have used Lapua brass and weighed each piece new and the weights were extremely close so I never really worried about it. This time around I am waiting on a new 223 to get finished up and I have a fair amount of once fired Wolf Gold and Lake City that I am going to use and I expect the weights to vary quite a bit more than the Lapua.

Once I get the rifle and can properly set up the dies I plan to resize/deprime, trim, swage, and tumble each piece before weighing so they are as uniform as possible. How close do you look for the weights to be? Are there any other steps I should consider before weighing?

I know Lake City is known to be pretty good stuff, but I have never used Wolf in the past. Before I spend a lot of time prepping and weighing the Wolf cases, are they worth it or should I just save them for the AR? I have read some mixed reviews, but nothing really solid.

Thanks,

 

[Olen_4504]

Waste of time. Dear god

 

[NiteQwill]

Do not do it. Wasting time better spent on the range.

There is a good episode on Everyday Sniper addressing this.

 

[TheOfficeT-Rex]

You're not going to get many answers for weight sorting here, other than "waste of time" and "no measurable benefit to practical application on steel targets". Maybe try a benchrest forum.

 

[BuckeyePrecision]

Well, that answers my question, saves me a lot of time and shows just how much I am overthinking all of this. I appreciate the input.

 

[Dthomas3523]

If you’re going to sort, do it by volume. Many times the weight difference is in the rim area and non consequential.

For practical shooting though, I wouldn’t bother. And definitely not on lapua brass for any kind of shooting.

 

[wvlapua]

Instead of weight sorting, just sort by brand.

 

[Steel head]

Weight sort brass?

 

[BigOldPhatboy]

Each brand (head stamp) will have different case volumes and will result in different pressure (velocity ) with the same charge weight.

 

[mmlj]

Agree with the above poster, sort by head stamp. I recently weighed some Starline and Hornady new 300 BLK brass after reading that the Starline was much heavier than other brands. It was significantly heavier than the Hornady and Speer 223 converted brass.

 

[Threadcutter308]

I use Lapua and I do sort. However, the max variation in weight for 6.5 x 47L tends to be about 2 grains. IIRC, the median weight is about 172 grains, so the error is ~ 1.1%. For the guys that are saying it's not worth it, they're probably not wrong. I'm old, don't shoot competitively/PRS and I don't lose brass. I get probably 15 or 20 reloads out of a batch of brass, so the upfront time to sort isn't so bad. If you lose brass, it probably doesn't make sense to sort.

 

[mcfred]

Weight-sorting discount or milsurp brass can tighen up the velocity extreme spread. I have heard that Lapua brass is good enough that the effort is better spent elsewhere.

That said, on a Winchester Super Short Magnum wildcat I played with the Winchester brass had 300+ milligram (~4.6gr) spread in weights in a bag of 50 pieces. After sorting, I ran the 5 heaviest, and the 5 lightest over a chrony and there was a consistent 40fps difference between the heavy and the light cases. For shooting steel beyond 1000 yards it makes a difference, not a big one, but it's a variable I have control over.

If you're like a lot of the people here and "long range" is 500yds, because you're on the east coast, then, I'd agree, it doesn't matter. Today, I'm in the desert and I can shoot 1875yds walking 8 minutes from my front door.

So whether or not it's worth it to you and your shooting discpline, is for you to decide. The tools to evaluate its importance are available to you.

Instead of weight sorting, just sort by brand.

I think this is misleading. Some manufacturers have horrible weight variation from lot to lot over time. If you're invested in the long-range game, then don't take it for granted that headstamps mean things are all the same. I have two pieces of Federal .40S&W brass that are 540mg different. That's 8.3 grains on tiny casings...