I had pretty much sworn off Winchester brass but needed some 7MM Rem Mag in a hurry and Cabela’s only had Winchester on hand I bought it knowing better. Well they did not disappoint as 6 pieces were completely unusable and almost all had dented necks.

I may have some NIB Nosler brass if you're in a jam DStroud.

Dented nks isn't out of the norm for most manufactures due to shipping. One pass on a mandrel and done.

Yea I usually run all thru a FL die just to prep for chamfer but it’s aggravating when the necks are wrinkled beyond repair
Thanks Jg for the offer but this brass will suffice for now.
On the bright side these newcomers such as Peterson brass make some fine brass that needs little to no prep work based off what I have seen so far.

Yep. I’m certain the last step of their manufacturing process is to get the largest guy in the quality control department to dance on all brass before packaging. Ive loaded thousands upon thousands of rounds of Winchester brass, and for the last couple of years I can count on a 2-4% loss per hundred. I’m talking straight in the trash, split necks. Nearly every case mouth in the bag is so out of round it has to go over a mandrel. In fact, I threw away two pieces of 338 Win mag today fresh out of a bag. I think Winchester must know, because I usually find one or two extra pieces of brass per hundred. Which ironically, is usually one or two pieces less than I need to make the full original quantity. I understand that stuff gets banged around in shipping, but it’s more than just dented case mouths here and there. I just don’t see this level of destruction with other brands, packaged the same way, presumably being shipped by the same trucks.

Whew....rant over.

Ah man completely ruined nks is something else. Very sad as win brass used to be a decent brass at a bargin price for years.

Curious what Dallas Reloads would say on this. If you poke around his site, you see lots of Win. brass.

Yes, I see the exact same thing. When I load up 100 rounds for an order, I often lose 1-5 cases out of 100. The bagged brass is the worst. I buy almost all of my Winchester brass in bulk, like 1000-5000 piece quantity boxes. The bulk brass is much better than the bagged brass. I have to prep the case mouths of the Win brass to load them. The necks are almost always dinged up. I simply run them in the press to "kiss" the expander ball in a FL die. The case mouth goes up into the die and just touches the expander ball enough to round out the case mouth. I then chamfer the case mouths to remove the slight burrs they have (which I do on all my new brass).

The most common issue on a bad piece of brass I see is a folded case neck or a crease in the case neck from production. It renders the case useless and unloadable.

Otherwise, I do like Winchester brass for the added case volume. They have the most internal case volume available. If you want to hot rod a round or get the most velocity out of the round, the Win cases are great for this. But when I use the Win brass, I have more case prep to load them up.

But, if I want precision and consistency, I recommend Norma and Lapua brass when available. These 2 brands have the BEST consistency and case quality, by far. They are more expensive, but IMO, they are worth every penny.

Here's a picture of brass I just loaded yesterday. 338 win mag. Lost 2 cases from 100 pieces. (cblackall works with me, and he sees this all the time!)



Here's some 270 win, same issues. Bad necks and one case didn't even have writing on the case head.

Could you collect the bad ones for credit?

Heck yes!! I have a big bag of bad brass I want to send in for credit. It's a lot!!!

Winchester, Remington, Hornady brass, all of it requires lots of work, straight out of the bag, as far as I'm concerned. I will run it through the sizing die, trim/chamfer/debur and debur the flash hole. Then I can finally load it. Makes very good ammo, but it requires work.

Lapua, and Nosler I have loaded straight out of the box, with no prep work. Just like any other brass, I prefer it after it has been fired once, and headspace set .001" to .002" less than fired.

I know I don't load near the quantity of several of you above, but I have always been pretty happy with Winchester brass. Got a bag of it last year for my 243 and found the first piece I ever had to throw away fresh out of the bag.

Out of 100 pcs of new 300 win mag brass , some had imperfections or dents, at least one half of them were very tight in my chamber and 1/4 of them would not even chamber.

Fireman spoke for me. Lapua and Norma (and Nosler) usually need no case prep, though I do trim and chamfer them. Going on memory, since I haven’t used Nosler lately, I don’t think it needed any prep at all.

Till recently, I used Winchester cases in the 220, and when well prepped they gave excellent accuracy. Same with the Remington in the 270.

I will mention that I had chambering problems with Lapua brass a while back, but it wasn’t the fault of the brass. The guy that put the new barrel on my 223 had, without my knowing, cut the chamber to match dimensions. The Lapua had neck wall thickness that was a wee bit too much when a bullet had been seated. I could not seat a loaded round, even one that went happily into a Wilson Case Gauge. Took me forever to figure out the problem. Had the chamber opened a bit, and all is well now.