The
lowly brass cartridge case gets no respect. In spite of all of the gizmos
that are sold for case preparation, very few shooters bother using those
tools. There’s no doubt that the case is generally taken for granted as
being merely a receptacle for the bullet, powder, and primer. Don’t
believe me? Just listen in on any conversation about reloading. The first
thing everyone talks about is the bullet. Then it’s the type and amount of
powder. Primers may get a mention, but cases are rarely, if ever,
seriously talked about. Bullets and powder are definitely the stars that
everyone likes to discuss.
Additionally, many, if not most, shop for cases based on price alone,
believing that one brand is pretty much as good as another. At the other
end of the scale are those shooters that religiously buy only one brand of
cartridge case, and never waver in their belief that their brand is best.
When you ask them why their brand is better than the other brands (who
also have their ardent advocates) the answers can get a little vague.
When
Nosler announced that they were getting into the brass business, I have to
admit that I was a little surprised. How could Nosler compete with the
likes of Remington and Winchester who have well over a hundred years of
experience, and control 90% or more of the civilian market with all the
related advantages of that scale of manufacturing? Well, rather than try
to compete on price, Nosler decided to compete on quality. In other words,
they would try to offer the best cartridge cases available on the market,
and call those cases “Custom”.
So what
makes these cases “custom”? Well for one, all the cases are weight sorted.
So what does that mean? It means that each and every case is weighed, and
any cases that that don’t meet their standard are kicked out of the run to
probably end up on the scrap pile.
I was
curious about this, and so went through the tedious process of weighing
each of the fifty Nosler 204 cases that I had recently picked up. (As you
know, I believe the 204 Ruger has real potential as a half scale
cartridge, but only time and experience will tell.) My trusty Ohaus
digital scale told me that the Nosler cases ran from 101 - 99.3 grains in
weight. This was an extreme spread of only 1.7 grains. However, out of the
50 cases, 47 were actually within a half a grain of each other! This is
outstandingly consistent.
Why is
this a good thing? Brass cases that have a wide variation in weight will
also have equal variations in powder capacity due to the thickness or lack
of thickness of the brass. That difference is very likely going to result
in velocity variations. Velocity variations will then result in variable
accuracy, especially beyond 100 meters. To be truthful, these velocity
variations won’t be huge, but when you’re trying to hit a half scale
chicken at 200 meters or a ground hog at 250, every improvement in
accuracy counts.
Did you
know that Nosler cases are also totally ready to load right out of the
box? For instance, the case mouth is already chamfered. The flash hole has
also been de-burred on the inside, and the case has been even sized for
you. If you’re like a lot of people these days who are always pressed for
time, you’ll appreciate the fact that Nosler has already taken care of
these things. However the thing that impressed me the most about these
Nosler cases was how clean and perfect the primer pockets were.
For some reason, primer pockets
for the big names seem to be an after thought. For one, they’re almost
always concave and often have tool marks on the bottom to boot. I’ve even
seen oval flash holes, and worse, off center flash holes. The Nosler’s are
perfectly flat, smooth as silk, and have perfect flash holes inside and
out. Just the appearance of these perfect primer pockets told me that here
was brass that was a cut above the herd. Seating my primers in these cases
was actually a pleasurable experience. With most other cases, the seating
process often feels mushy. With these, the seating process was crisp i.e.
the primer went in smoothly and hit the bottom of the pocket, firmly
giving just the right amount of crush on the anvil. Very nice.
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Nosler
brass right out of the box |
One
last thing. Nosler cautions that its brass is thicker (has less case
capacity) than others and recommends that you use starting loads first and
then work your way up. The advantage of the thicker brass is that it’s
stronger, and therefore should be able to be reloaded more times than
other thinner brass. Indeed, Nosler says that they’ve reloaded cases as
many as 33 times without any primer pocket stretching.
I
decided to check whether the Nosler’s were really heavier or not, and
weighed 50 Remington cases for comparison. While the Nosler cases averaged
99.67 grains in weight, the Remington cases weighed in at 89.66 grains -
just over a ten grain, or around a 10% difference. That’s significant. In
these days of exploding prices for brass, the durability of the Nosler’s
has a lot of appeal for me.
I also
checked the variation in the thickness of the brass at the case mouth. If
the brass is a lot thicker on one side of the mouth and a lot thinner on
the other side, the bullet won’t be as centered with the bore as well as
it would be otherwise. Off center bullets = less accuracy. I measured a
dozen Nosler cases in six places around the circumference of the mouth and
found only one thousandths of a inch in variation in one small location.
Pretty darn good.
The
bottom line here is that these Nosler cases are right up there with the
quality of the best of the European imports like Lapua and Norma. They’re
strong, durable, and very consistent in construction. To get this kind of
quality, you’re going to pay more, but you’re going to get more too. It’s
well worth it.
Dan Wesson Help
I was
recently contacted by a shooter in Tampa, Florida who has an unfired, 357
Mag Dan Wesson revolver that is one of a special IHMSA series of 100 guns.
I’m pretty sure the gun was sold before 1980 or so through IHMSA’s
newspaper of the time, The Silhouette. The gun is engraved with silhouette
animals on the barrel shroud, and has the original IHMSA logo with the
rectangular border, on the frame. The shooter is trying to get some
information about their gun. If anyone has any info or suggestions on
where to get info, drop me an e-mail at
tspotti@att.net
Case Annealing
I
haven’t talked about this subject in a couple of years but as I’ve noted,
the price of brass is going crazy. Even the availability of some brass has
been somewhat sporadic as well. The point here is that we should be doing
all we can to keep our brass cases in top condition for both accuracy and
to make it last as long as possible.
This is
especially true for cases that take a lot of work to make in the first
place.
We all
know that super high pressures are the prime enemy of all cartridge cases.
Loose primer pockets and even case head separations are the inevitable
result.
Neck
splits are more common. These are the result of the brass being work
hardened by being expanded and contracted during the reloading process and
then being expanded again when the bullet is fired. Have a gun with
generous dimensions in the neck area? Well, the case neck will be
expanded/worked even farther. Additionally, it’s not well known, but just
seating the bullet in the case puts the neck under tremendous stress. All
of this adds up to eventual cracking/splitting in the neck area and lost
targets.
Annealing is a simple process of applying heat to the case necks to
eliminate any brittleness that has built up over time, and to restore the
case’s natural resiliency. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of misinformation
floating around about annealing, even from big name gun writers. The
problem is that most people over do it, and apply way too much heat. I
remember my first experience with annealing many years ago. I went over to
a buddy’s house who said he knew how to do it. He stood my cases up in a
pan of water and then got a propane torch and heated the necks to the
point where they were glowing red and then orange. The edges of the case
mouths were even glowing white hot. It all looked fascinating, and I was
very impressed by this semi industrial looking display of pyrotechnics.
“That ought to do it.” He said. “All set.” When I got home, I charged the
cases with primers and powder. So far so good. When I attempted to seat
the bullet, the neck collapsed! “What the #$*! is this! “I shouted. I
tried another, and got the same result. The over heating of the necks had
made the brass dead soft. All 100 cases were ruined and had to be thrown
away along with the primers that had been seated in them. I was not a
happy camper.
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"Many over
heat cases necks when using the pan and propane method of
annealing." |
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There’s
nothing wrong with the pan and propane method of annealing. We just have to
use a little restraint with the torch. It’s inherently safe as the water will
effectively protect the case head from the heat. This is important because you
NEVER want to risk getting the case head softened. If it does get softened,
the head could blow off with all kinds of nasty consequences. Subsequently, I
like to have the cases standing up to their middles in the water. OK, before
using the torch, you want the cases to be clean and shinny. If they’re not, we
won’t be able to see a color change that will tell us when the right amount of
heat has been applied. So tumble your cases or what ever before hand.
Set the
torch on a low to medium setting. Now take a test case, place it in the water,
and make light pass from around 6-8 inches away. We want the neck to turn a
slight pink and blue color. When that happens, the anneal is perfect. If
nothing happens, come in closer with the torch. If you can, rotate the pan to
apply the heat on all sides evenly. That’s all there is to it.
You’ll
quickly discover that while this method is simple, it’s also awkward and
clumsy. Consequently, it really is suited for only small numbers. The problem
is that with numerous cases sitting in the pan at the same time, it’s very
difficult to apply the heat evenly around all of the cases as they stand in
the way of each other. On the other hand, if you anneal one at a time, it
takes forever to get the job done. So, if you’re doing anything over 10-15
cases, get one of Ken Light’s little annealing machines.
As you know Ken is a faithful advertiser in the IHMSA NEWS and
was a long time silhouette shooter. I’ve got one of the very first annealer's that he ever sold, and the thing has been as reliable as a
Redding reloading press i.e. nothing ever goes wrong with it. Ken’s
machine has a round aluminum plate about 1.5” thick with holes in the
top of its circumference. Place the cases in the holes and plug in. The
plate will then rotate the cases in front of a pair of propane torches.
The individual cases will also rotate in the holes as well, insuring
that all sides of the case are exposed to the same amount of heat. A
pool of water in the center of the plate insures that the temperature of
the plate and cases never exceeds the boiling point of the water. This
is far below the temperature needed to excessively soften brass. The
machine is simple, effective, and fast. 100 cases can be done in around
five minutes easy.
So how
often should you anneal your cases? It depends on your loads. If you shoot super
hot, annealing after 3 times would be about right. Regular silhouette loads
would need annealing after around 5 times. Pistol brass should be annealed
more often because it goes through a belling process that bottleneck cases
avoid (unless you use cast bullets). Belling case mouths is extremely hard on
brass, so it would be not unreasonable to do a light anneal after every other
firing. The bottom line here is that if you want to preserve the inherent
accuracy of your loads, and extend the life of your expensive and hard to make
cases, annealing should be part of your regular case processing procedures.
You can anneal by hand, but the Ken Light machine is a lot better and faster.
Micro-stamping Part
III
A couple of
months ago I wrote about California passing a law that will require all semi
auto handguns sold in the state to have their firing pins tips engraved with
identifying information. The theory is that if a semi auto is used in a crime,
the criminal can be traced by using the information stamped on the primer of
the ejected casing. This scheme is totally unpractical for many technical
reasons which I outlined at that time. The legislature’s own study also
concluded that micro-stamping was unworkable. I also warned that the
proponents of micro-stamping were working to spread this type of legislation
around the nation. I’m sure there were readers that thought I was exaggerating
and that micro-stamping was a just California problem. Well, it may very well
be your problem soon.
Xavier
Becerra, a California Congressman representing the 31st Congressional District
(which includes Hollywood), recently introduced the National Crime Gun
Identification Act in the House of Representatives. The language of his bill
is almost identical to that of the micro stamping law that passed in
California. I urge you to educate yourselves on this foolish piece of anti gun
legislation and exercise your rights as a citizen by contacting your
Congressional representative and urging them not to vote for this bill.
Contact info for your representative can be found in the telephone book under
“US Government”.
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