I use Remington brass when I develope hunting loads for my bolt rifles. I use Remington brass for the loads that I've developed when I hunt. I have an assortment of brass from different companies, FC, Winchester, Hornaday, Lake City. Sometimes I load FC and Win brass with the load I developed in the RP brass for practice loads. I see no difference in accuracy and no signs of over pressure. So why is it said that you should start from scratch and develope a load for each specific brand of brass?

Neck length, case capacity and several other issues when loading close to max or compressed loads with different brass. Some are thicker than others is the reason one piece of brass may hold more than others.. If you are not close to max case capacity you should be fine. I have saw no issues with mixing brands specially on hunting rounds if you are not close to max ..

A good example of what parkj5 is talking about is in the 308 cartridge. Using Lake City brass, my load is too hot in it. I have hard bolt lift and pressure signs. Put the same powder charge, primer and bullet in a Lapua case and everything is just fine.

FWIW, anytime I change any component in the recipe I always back up a bit and reconstruct the load.

Overcautious? Maybe. But that's just me.

I'm a very careful reloader especially because my son is using my reloads also. That injects a bit more caution on my part.

All depends. If your are pushing the envelope at or above a max book load then yes I would back down.

I load several different loads that either for accuracy or recoil etc are mid range loads. On the mid range loads I will just load with the new component same charge and check for accuracy.

I load to the upper end in most cases because that's where I find the combination of accuracy and velocity that I want in my hunting rounds but never max.

I have not tried the LC brass yet. I hear they are quite abit thicker so if the case looks fuller that with RP I'll back it down.

Thanks for the input guys.

I wouldn't depend on it "looking fuller" to judge whether it's over pressure or not.

Instead of going by looks, load the case with powder to the base of the neck for each brand and then weigh the amount of powder each one took. This will give you a more accurate gauge of case size difference.

Excellent idea!

If you have a max load with 308 brass you always want to back off a few grains when using military 7.62x51 NATO. The brass is thicker and it has less internal capacity.

Is there an advantage to using military brass for a bolt rifle? Less stretch? It lasts longer?

No advantage in my opinion. Unless you are loading extremely hot, or overworking the brass with the resizing die, quality civilian brass will last a long time.

The easier method is measuring the water capacity. Fill a few cases up with water, and weigh the water. Powder can settle or pack differently when loaded in a case, and would allow for some variance.

Sirrah243,

I've had .308 and .22-250 shoot the same load the same way on Remington, Federal, Winchester, and Hornady brass. But I would rework the load when switching to Lapua, Nosler, and especially any military brass such as Lake City.

Chad gave great advice. If you aren't certain how to do it, here's a video explaining the process. It isn't the best video I've seen, but it does give the proper info:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMEtfT-e0eg

Thanks for all the info guys.

Good info, thanks.

Also, I like to see Nosler's load data. They list the water capacity on the cases they are using in their data. This is helpful to take into account the differences from your brass to their brass. The only issue is if you look at all the loads, their water case capacity varies from different bullets with the same brand of Nosler brass. That seems odd to me. Winchester brass has the most case capacity and LC or WCC military brass has the least amount of case capacity. So 40 grains of powder in a LC or WCC case would be a hotter or higher pressure round than a Win case would. If you work up a max load in Win brass of say 45 grains and put that same 45 grains in a case that has less capacity than the Win brass, you are sure to have an over pressure round. If precision and consistency is the goal, this is why I don't recommend mixing your brass with the same load. With a light powder charge, or a middle of the road powder charge, it's may be ok to have some plinking ammo to shoot, but it may difficult to have a consistent load doing this.

http://load-data.nosler.com/load-data/308-winchester/