Can you use any brass case to reload? A lot of the recipes I have seen just use Winchester brass. If I can' t find a recipe for the brass I have then " Don' t Use It" ?
You can still use your brass. I' m partial to Remington brass but i also use Federal and Winchester, however i don' t mix them up. In other words i either load all Remington all Federal or all Winchester when working up a load or reloading. Although different type brass may have some variations it will still work and just because one load works with Remington brass doesn' t mean that the same load wouldn' t work just as good with another type brass.
For safety reasons the books want you to use the same brass that they used in the books because that just happens to be the brass they used to get their safe maximum pressure numbers. The other brass is perfectly safe to use you should just start on the low side. Any time you change a component, brass, primer, bullet, powder, in reloading you should start working up a new load. Subtle changes can have a drastic effect on pressures.
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"The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the Presidency........... Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The Republic can survive a Barack Obama, who is, after all, merely a fool. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president."
if you' re loading for the .308 and you have military brass.......don' t use it with loads for other brass.....you must back off and develope your load slowly.
That practice must be followed all the time when you change brass......anytime you' re loaded to max and you decide to change anything.....it' s start over time for developement.
It' s just a safe practice. If you are at a maximum load with X brass and use the same maximum load with Z brass you might have problems. Herdness of the brass, thickness of the brass, case capacity will all affect pressures.
__________________
"The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the Presidency........... Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The Republic can survive a Barack Obama, who is, after all, merely a fool. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president."
I used a bad example in the .308.....however I used to neck down govt. brass .30-06 to .270 and I assure you that you need to back down and start all over again.....Govt. brass seems to raise the pressures when a given load is fired in it compared to commercial brass.
So far I haven' t noticed it in the .223
It' s still a good practice to err on the side of safe.....you only got one set of hands and one set of eyes.
For safety resons it is best to sort by manufacturer. Also sorting by manufacturer will improve accuracy. Winchester brass often has a bit more capacity than Remington. These differences will affect velocity, which will affect consistency if you mix them!
DG,
Many years ago, on a small, distant planet...oh, pardon that, just another senior moment.
Actually, in the years before Federal produced center fire ammo, the choice in cases for the .270 was Rem., Win., Norma, or resized military .30-06.
Winchester had the highest capacity, with Rem. and Norma less, depending upon lot number. Military had the least capacity of all, even with the same neck length as the commercial cases. (When military cases are first resized to the .270, the necks are shorter than the .270 specs, because the .30-06 has a shorter neck.)
Capacity was determined by filling cases with water, and then weighing the water on a very accurate balance. The reason for capacity difference was the thickness of brass used by the various companies.
For all intents and purposes, this difference is insignificant. BUT, if one is pushing the envelope for hot loads with a relatively fast burning powder (4064, for example) just switching case brands could conceivably cause an unsafe pressure situation to develop. Fortunately, the most popular powders for the .270 at the time were H4831 (popularized by Jack O' Connor) and IMR 4350. Both of these are slow burning powders which seldom caused real problems because it was very difficult to cram much over maximum loads into a .270 case. Jack and I corresponded occasionally, and I never could cram the amount of 4831 into my .270 cases that he said he could. But then, being Irish, he probably had a platoon of little people jumping up and down on the powder to compress it.
.270 win brass
