Weighing cases

[Mickey Christian]

When weighing cases and sorting by weight, what is the interval used to separate by weight, .2grain? More? Less?
thanks

[P. Greaney]

I am a service rifle competitor. When I began I did all manner of case preparation to include selecting cases by weight. It became apparent to me that much of what I was doing was a waste of time. One of the high master (NRA rating) shooters I met in the Navy shooting program told me that all that fine detail that I was doing to my "short line" (200 & 300 yard) ammunition was a waste of time. I now completly agree with that opinion. As I usually load one thousand rounds at a time for my "short line" ammunition, I select a couple hundred cases for the six hundred yard range and do to them the fine detail such as weighing cases and checking bullet runout etc. These latter last me the season for the year as I only use them for competition. I don't expect to be shooting clover leaf or single hole groups, I am just trying to hold the ten ring.

I would suggest you weigh the entire lot of brass, cull the extremes and load the bulk for whatever purpose you are loading them for. Unless you are a benchrest shooter, I doubt you will notice much difference.

[joem]

A fellow shooter would fill each case with water then weigh the water only. That is how he choose his cases for bench rest testing.

[musketshooter]

There is not a person alive that is capable of telling the difference of the bullet strike at 600-1000 yards between weighted and non-weighted cases. There are many other more important factors to contend with. Cases sorted by manufacturer would be just a beneficial.

[barretcreek]

Sorting by headstamp is all. I would check the bullet run out. If sorting by run out makes a difference then I would upgrade to a better seating die set up.

[Sunray]

"...There is not a person alive..." Or dead. Weighing cases is a bench rest shooting technique that only applies to bench rest shooting. Makes no difference to the rest of us. Neither does the water capacity.
"...just trying to hold the ten ring..." That'd be 12" at 600 and 20" at 800 plus for NRA shooting.

[Mickey Christian]

Thanks for delivering me from an exercise in futility.
I found about 450 once fired LC 72 match brass at a gun show and trimmed all to the same length so sounds like I should be good to go. I am not a bench shooter.

[RED]

Go back and read how/why Dillon came up with the progressive loader. He proved time and time again, his reloads were as accurate as the bench shooters that went to the extremes on case prep.

[Mickey Christian]

interesting!

[fguffey]

When weighing cases and sorting by weight, what is the interval used to separate by weight, .2grain? More? Less?
thanks

I loaded 250 30/06 cases on a Dillon RL550B, when finished I weighed each loaded round and found 17 grains difference between the heavies and lightest. One of my favorite characters in the old days was Wallis Berry, he had a way to eliminate worry; "It's OK there little buddy, don you worry about it". I worry about 17 grains difference between the lightest and heaviest; If I do not know the weight of the components before I start there is no way to determine the amount of powder in each case before pulling the trigger.

And then there is "Must have been a double charge" or "no charge" and the next case gets both charge.

I went to the firing range with another local reloader. We set up with another shooter between us. The shooter/reloader was doing everything he could do to pull the hammer back, pull the trigger, or rotate the cylinder and he even tried to swing the cylinder out; nothing. He had a bullet lodged in the forcing cone that locked his cylinder. We stopped our shooting and helped him, we drove the bullet back into the case and emptied his cylinder. To out surprise he started loading 6 more rounds into his S&W Model 66. We tried to rationalize with him; if he did not know of one case had no powder how sure was he the next round fired had both changes. We offered to help him with his reloading, we offered to loan him equipment etc. All we managed to do was make him mad, he left. We offered to give him all the ammo he could shoot.

I went to the range because the other reloader said I did not know how to load for the 1911 45 ACP. His ammo did not work any better than my reloads. My ACP likes new ammo, it does not like cases with bullet lines.

F. Guffey

I suggested the reloader learn discipline, I could not convince him he could have determined the amount of powder in each loaded round had he know the weight of the components. And then there are bench resters.

[bruce]

When weighing cases and sorting by weight, what is the interval used to separate by weight, .2grain? More? Less?
thanks

If you are trying to milk the last iota of potential accuracy from a particular load, weigh away! Benchrest shooters go to extremes to prepare a few cases for a rifle. They then use those very well prepared cases in that rifle to make tiny little groups at various distances. Cool. Learn a lot from them. Some of it is applicable in other shooting sports. Weighing cases? Taken to extremes it will just give you stomach trouble.

Years ago I lucked into a big batch of LC NM cases. I weighed a 100 case sample and found a average. I then weighed all the cases and sorted them for high, low and in the middle using a .5 difference. Hindsight... sometimes is 20/20. In hindsight, can't say it made any difference shooting service rifles in vintage military rifle matches. But, do prefer to sort into large uniform as possible batches, then load and use. It removes one possible variable when firing brass that is from multiple lot numbers.

One further thought. Using some of this prepared brass, I was able to develop loads for Rem. 700 LH in .30-06 Springfield that would produce 3 shot groups of less than .5MOA using Nosler BT bullets. Fluke? Probably. But, with less well prepared ammo, that Rem. 700 was a MOA rifle. Using those loads, it would just about routinely keep 5 shots inside 1 inch at 200 yds. using a decent Leupold scope and proper benchrest technique. If firing loads in a bolt-action service rifle, no reason not to use every method known to eliminate variables and produce the very best match ammunition possible. Just don't let it consume you to the point that you drive yourself nuts. JMHO. Sincerely. bruce.

[bigedp51]

At http://forum.accurateshooter.com/forums/reloading-forum-all-calibers.2/ weighing cases comes up all the time with benchrest shooters. The problem is there is no correlation case weight and internal volume meaning each case needs to be checked for case capacity in grains of H2O.

The smaller the case capacity the more capacity can effect velocity and thus accuracy. As you can see below case weight has no bearing on capacity, and "uniformity" means far more.

http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o254/bigedp51/casecap_zps3f8bb2c9.jpg

Below you can see the weight variation between Lapua cases at one end and Winchester at the other. And the vast majority of competitive shooters buy Lapua brass and do nothing to it and just shoot it. I buy once fired Lake City cases because I can get 500 cases for less than you pay for 100 Lapua cases.

http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o254/bigedp51/223-556weight_zps3566d29a.jpg