.308 Brass Question

[dtbighit]

What is this "new brass" you speak of? I can't find any .308 anywhere.

Also, I haven't invested in a trimmer or case prep power tool yet. What's the going rate for case prep, or just trimming?

I know you can't find brass anywhere,you can order a Lee case trimmer and lock stud for cheap and do it by hand,its slow but yields good results for me,when I do .308 I take my time and don't load in volume anyway

[SA Friday]

Check the Walmart off of Harmony. I think they carry reloading stuff, and if so, may have an RCBS case trimmer. They run about $70-75. Having all the cases the same length will make a difference in accuracy. For my bolt guns, I like to resize inbetween neck sizing and full resizing. I set my resizer to just resize the case wall and shoulder barely enough to allow for an easy bolt lock-up and no more. It took some testing to get the resizing dies to where I wanted them, but I see a slight increase in accuracy without the increase in difficulty getting the bolt locked into place. A lot of the reloading forums out there call this "knocking the shoulder back". While learning the process or reloading, I would recommend going with a little more resizing than a little less.

As for different brass, I shoot a lot of Lapua, Win, and Rem brass in various calibers. In 308 specifically, a lot of Lapua and Win. I can get the two different cases to his the same POA and POI even past 600 yds, but they take two different powder charges to do this. Running mixed brass in a rifle will result in inaccurate groups unless you do tons of testing and get lucky enough to figure out exactly what brass and powder mix will result in the same accuracy... WAY too much effort. Only an anal retentive mad scientist like me would spend the time and effort to do something like this. (OK, maybe Zombie Steve would do it too. He's kinda nutty like me.) Separate the brass and treat the different makes as different ammo requiring different reloading specs.

Powders: Varget, RL-15, or IMR 4064. Try them in that order. Work up your loads, shoot groups for accuracy. Keep records of all the reloads you try along the way.

This will help too. http://www.ar-15.co/threads/30291-Ho...oad?highlight=

[Rucker61]

How about this for a trimmer: http://www.littlecrowgunworks.com/wft.html