cleaning fired brass 101

[eggman918]

I got this rifle for personal defense around the property so never really thought about MOA accuracy. it's a fun range gun and the grandkids really like it when shooting sub sonics I look at it as a updated M1 carbine with many bullet options. I was just concerned about my process and had no clue what to expect so at first I thought 30FPS oh no what did I do wrong, so I'll wait till I get 6.5 projectiles to fret about that.
But that being said just how tight should the spread be when doing things "right", the machinist in me wants things as close to perfect as is possible but also there is no point in trying to carry it so far that one gets discouraged at the start of the process.

[eggman918]

Lol. Looking forward to the responses ok this question. Could you provide more details;

Purpose of load
Expected range
Primer
Powder
Brass
Bullet
Load data
Etc

16.4gr CFE BLK
Hornady brass
Federal GM205MAR primers
Hornady 180gr SST seated to 2.215"
As to purpose a place to start, the SST's were what I could find in town that didn't break the bank and the CFE BLK was what was locally available that seemed to be the most versatile.
Had to start somewhere and this combo was it.

[Harpoon1]

I can honestly say, I’m not even sure they can! My pins measure .040 OD, the small Lapua flash hole is .059 OD. How can a smaller pin get stuck in a larger hole? Have had a few get stuck in the neck sideways, no big deal, push them in and they fall right out. Whereas corncob and walnut media has been a nightmare when cleaning decapped brass! What a pita! It’s always stuck in the flash hole, always inside the case. Sonic cleaning is all but useless for me. Batches are way too small. It’s the least effective method of the bunch! For me, when it comes to cleaning brass with a sonic cleaner, if I could do it all over again, I wouldn’t! To be fair it’s is useful for other duties.

LRRPF52, have you tried decapping and full length resizing with a tapered bushing and an expander ball? Almost zero runout with 1 pull. There’s no need to decap, then resize, then use a mandrel to set neck tension. 1 pull instead of 3! It’s life altering!

[Klem]

Egg,

That spread sounds about normal. Hard to conclude much with a spread of only 5 shots. Plus the chronograph will have an inbuilt error which you will never eliminate. Extreme spreads are useful but one deviant round can throw your whole perspective of the load out. Whereas standard deviations are a more accurate description of statistical spread. Regardless, if they are all the same load then results on the target tend to relegate velocities. What did the load look like on the target?

For Blackout in general I find it's the 'poor cousin' of the 5.56 for ballistics and also results when hunting. For all the 30cal bullets available, there are only a few will open up at its slow velocities, and even then it's nothing to write home about. Its suppressed, subsonic capability is something 5.56 cannot do however, so in Special Forces it has a purpose. For that, 9mm and .22 are lighter and quieter without giving up much, meaning there's competition for that niche.

I use an ultrasonic that is larger than those sold for shooters. It has a heating function and holds more, so maybe 100 per wash - I'll have to check and get back to you.

[eggman918]

Klem,
I purchased the Magnetospeed and read that it affected POI so was shooting off a bag on truck hood at 100 yards target was a 12" paper plate all 5 were high and left of plate about 4".
The dust cloud was fairly tight it was just after dawn so that is the best I can say was not really worried about grouping this was the first use of chronograph and first firing of anything I have ever reloaded.
It is 103* now and my goal was to just send them down range get FPS and return to base, I'm lucky in that my range is on BLM land that is only 2 miles from home so grouping on a real target will happen later in the week.
They shot very similar to the Winchester 147gr FMJ factory loads compared to the 208gr hornady subs which rifle is sighted in for.

[Harpoon1]

Klem,
I purchased the Magnetospeed and read that it affected POI so was shooting off a bag on truck hood at 100 yards target was a 12" paper plate all 5 were high and left of plate about 4".
The dust cloud was fairly tight it was just after dawn so that is the best I can say was not really worried about grouping this was the first use of chronograph and first firing of anything I have ever reloaded.
It is 103* now and my goal was to just send them down range get FPS and return to base, I'm lucky in that my range is on BLM land that is only 2 miles from home so grouping on a real target will happen later in the week.
They shot very similar to the Winchester 147gr FMJ factory loads compared to the 208gr hornady subs which rifle is sighted in for.

FWIW: I use a Labradar as my primary “chronograph”, however sometimes a Magnetospeed makes sense. My personal experience has been, the thinner the barrel contour, the more deviation in POI! Common sense! With a 1” barrel, there is hardly if any POI noticeable. On a 560” Sporter barrel, it makes a huge difference. YMMV.

[eggman918]

FWIW: I use a Labradar as my primary “chronograph”, however sometimes a Magnetospeed makes sense. My personal experience has been, the thinner the barrel contour, the more deviation in POI! Common sense! With a 1” barrel, there is hardly if any POI is noticeable. On a 560” Sporter barrel, it makes a huge difference. YMMV.

Good to know, this is all new to me.

[Harpoon1]

Good to know, this is all new to me.

To be fair, a difference in POI is not the same as a difference in “group size” (dispersion). I personally didn’t pursue it enough to make a statistically accurate observation with regard to group size! Many claim the difference in POI is irrelevant, noise, and has no impact on group size! I remain skeptical of their claim without proof, YMMV.

[Klem]

Egg,

Your first reload - Excellent, congrats! 103degrees at 0530, you're a braver man than me.

OK, the 4" difference and slight offset at 100, between 300BLK supersonic and factory subs is normal. If you try a different bullet then the offset might be more or less left, or even to the right, but the 4" high will pretty much always be there. It will be even higher once you start loading lighter-weight bullets. Blackout is even slower than the Grendel so it makes sense to want the lightest bullet to get the fastest speeds. Down around the 110-125gn region is where factory supersonic loads are. If you have 180gn on hand then all good, but I would only use them in Blackout if they were dirt cheap or surplus (for training/plinking).

What Harpoon is referring to, how tight the group is (regardless of where it lands on the target), is important. This is the difference between precision and accuracy. Precision is how well the system shoots, made up of you as a shooter, the gun, the rest (your car bonnet), the weather conditions at the time, and the ammunition. If you can account for the first four, then the ammunition is the one left for tinkering with. Velocities from the chronograph are only a predictor of what you really want to know, which are results on target. So when there is a target available I would focus on that, and use velocities as a proxy for pressure, so they give us an idea of how safe the load is.

I use the Labradar as well. The advantage of not having something connected to your gun is that it's not going to influence the fall of shot, although you can get a Magneto attachment that goes on the handguard instead of the barrel. With the radar next to you, you can shoot at targets while getting a velocity for each shot, then upload the spreadsheet results later. Here's a subsonic workup for 300BLK using H4198 (also called AR2207), and 220 Sierra Match Kings. This is how I record charge work-ups, on a spreadsheet and often with their group sizes.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]19859[/ATTACH]

For results on the target I use my phone to take a picture, then import it into the program OnTarget on the laptop. It's quicker and more precise than mucking about with tape measures at the time in the heat. Here's a recent sample from a 223 bolt gun.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]19860[/ATTACH]

For handloading I use a combination of manufacturer tables, forum information, and the internal ballistics program called Quickload. The first two speak for themselves so here's a computer model of your load on Quickload.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]19861[/ATTACH]

It predicts your load to be 1,518fps which is pretty close to what you got. This means you can do 'What-if's" at home with reasonable confidence, and without needing to spend money or go to the range. I don't know your barrel length so entered 16". Peak pressure is the red line in the graph, and is way below max which is good for safety. Also good for your first attempt at reloading. It now means you can load more powder and still be safe, but unfortunately CFE-BLK powder is too bulky. Note how it is 103.1% full ('Filling/L.R.') at your 2.215" overall length. That means you are compressing the powder as you seat the bullet, maybe even feeling a slight crunch in the handle as the bullet is seated. There's not a lot more space to compress that powder and if you do this the pressures start to become unpredictable. You could try a lighter bullet or different powder if you want more performance. Tinker with loads in the program until you are happy, then go out and buy the powder/bullets.

[eggman918]

Klem I have 200 factory second 110gr polymer tipped flat base coming from midway that are $.22 ea that I'm gonna play with to start with, later I want to find a affordable heavier bullet for a cost effective sub load that the grandkids can plink with. I want to get up to speed with the whole process slowly, I'm new reloading but not to building things where mistakes can have serious repercussions and truly believe the old saying "First do no harm" so it's gonna be baby steps for now. I would like to go down from my starting point with the 180gr but think at this point I do not have the needed knowledge/experience to do it from what I have read but info is all over the place so discretion is best for now.
I truly do appreciate your time and guidance.
Upper is a Aero Precision 16" 1-7 twist pistol length gas system.

It was only 75* at 05:30 the high was 103* we are at 4,500' here so it cools off at night, my kids live in Phoenix and a couple of days ago 91* was their "low" that's one reason we live here I can deal with triple digit highs but it has to cool off when the sun goes down.

[StoneHendge]

Eggman, I have a 16" 300 Blk for home defense and pretty much exclusively use 110 gr Nosler Varmageddons with Winchester 296/Hodgdon H110 (magnum pistol powders). You're going to like 110's in it!. I push them at 2320 and the shoulder punch is significantly less than even 150s in the high teens. Looks like the Midway 2nds you have on the way are VMax's. Both the Varmageddons and VMax's are nasty bullets against soft targets. All of the testing i've done vs a 16" 5.56 with 55s approaching 3k shows the 300 smacking a lot harder - be it steel plates, small watermelons and other various sundry items from the produce department or household items that made a detour to a "range" before heading to the dumpster.

Don't fret over SDs if your truly making a defense load unless you're worried about getting in a shootout with cover at ranges over 100 yards - just find something accurate. Mine has a red dot zero'd at 50 yards (it shoots on a 3 MOA red dot at that range) and it holds minute of bad guy (ie, an IPSC) to 175 holding on the dot - far beyond any range you could look a judge or jury in the eye and say "that shot was in self defense". Any shot you're taking is not going to be impacted by the vertical dispersion of high velocity variation.

One of the beauties of 300 Blk if you're using a magnum pistol powder like we all did before dedicated (and slower burning) Blk powders came out is that most of the powder burns within 10" of barrel length, so there's much less of a fireball coming out of the muzzle. It's still there when the sun goes down, but it's not nearly as bright as other calibers with similar muzzle energy. I'll note that I use a linear comp to send all of the noise downrange, so the fireball is more conelike and gets sent downrange too. If you don't like your results with CFE Blk and 110s, you may want to try a faster powder like a magnum pistol powder..

[eggman918]

StoneHendge,
That's excellent info and exactly what I'm looking for in a load sounds like it will serve both needs for this platform, thinking I'll order more of those 110 seconds.
Tahnks.

[Klem]

Egg,

I'm with Stone on this.

For powder I use H4227 for supersonics, and H4195 for subsonics.

Supersonics are 110VMax, 110Nosler Varmageddon, 110TSXT, or 125TNT.
Subsonics are 220SMK.

Aimpoint red dot zeroed to 50yds.

[lazyengineer]

...
Decap and resize in one stroke with a full length bushing die with an expander ball. No run out issues using tapered bushings.
Wet tumble, flush, then separate and hand dry in a beach towel.
Then right to the annealeez for annealing. This completely dries the inside of case at the same time. 100 cases take about 20 minutes to anneal and dry. I don’t know if it’s carbon from the propane torch or some residue from the brass gassing off but, this way ...

So you anneal after resizing? So far I've heard 3 schools of thoughts:
1)Anneal BEFORE resizing, for a beneficial work hardening effect that will give a more consistent neck tension/spring upon bullet seating thereafter, in relation to your next cycle (where you won't anneal). This is the most common claim.
2)Anneal AFTER resizing, which is one extra stretch event "erased" by having been more freshly annealed.
3)Before or after is by and large only relevant for a bolt action shooter at 1000 yards if even then, so it doesn't matter
4)Annealing is a waste of time.

Historically I'm at 4. But I have to say most of my Grendel brass I lose, I lose due to neck splits. It seems like my reloading process really works the heck out of my brass, though the splits only happen after firing it. A friend loaned me Anealeez for a few months, since he only uses every year or so. So, I figure heck, i'll play with it. In my case, my issues are pushing me to your sequence, of #2 - doing it after sizing. In particular, I mandrel my necks, so in theory, I'll get the beneficial work hardening effect from my sized brass, when I do that, anyway to at least some extent (maybe?).

[DIANEB]

Cleaning the barrel has a lot to do with accuracy too...
First thing I do with fired brass
1 deprime brass
2 tumble brass
3 clean primer pockets
4 resize brass (lanolin and alcohol lube)
5 wash brass with Dawn powewash
6 let brass dry over night
7 tumble brass again...
8 trim and de-burr
Ready to load...

[Harpoon1]

So you anneal after resizing? So far I've heard 3 schools of thoughts:
1)Anneal BEFORE resizing, for a beneficial work hardening effect that will give a more consistent neck tension/spring upon bullet seating thereafter, in relation to your next cycle (where you won't anneal). This is the most common claim.
2)Anneal AFTER resizing, which is one extra stretch event "erased" by having been more freshly annealed.
3)Before or after is by and large only relevant for a bolt action shooter at 1000 yards if even then, so it doesn't matter
4)Annealing is a waste of time.

Historically I'm at 4. But I have to say most of my Grendel brass I lose, I lose due to neck splits. It seems like my reloading process really works the heck out of my brass, though the splits only happen after firing it. A friend loaned me Anealeez for a few months, since he only uses every year or so. So, I figure heck, i'll play with it. In my case, my issues are pushing me to your sequence, of #2 - doing it after sizing. In particular, I mandrel my necks, so in theory, I'll get the beneficial work hardening effect from my sized brass, when I do that, anyway to at least some extent (maybe?).

Yeah, I’m tracking! Multiple ways to get it done.

I anneal mostly for brass life. A second benefit with my method is that it also dries my brass at the same time and faster than any other method I’ve tried. Killing two birds. I don’t compete and I really don’t see any difference in accuracy annealing before or after resizing. For those who do compete, I can definitely see wanting to run a mandrel through the neck after annealing, just for piece of mind. My goal is to get it done with the least amount of wasted time and labor!

[Mark611]

This might be over kill for some of you, but I'm kind of OCD when it comes to my brass, I do not dry tumble anymore due to the dust, I wet tumble with SS pins and Dawn dish soap, that's all that's needed, I have a FA large tumbler, I can either clean my brass to look like new or just run it long enough to clean the outside of the brass without removing all of the cardon inside of the neck, I also use the sifter tumbler to remove the SS pins and water after rinsing the brass to remove any leftover soap, I have no stuck pin in the flash holes, I then put my cases in loading blocks that holes that go thru so any water left in cases has a place to drain out, I then use a hand held hair drier on max heat to dry my brass, this takes only a few minutes to dry about 100 cases at a time, I do remove the primers with a Lyman universal de priming die before tumbling, then I start my brass prep again, I anneal my cases, run them thru a Redding body die, then a LEE collet die, trim to length on my Wilson trimmer, chamfer and de burr the case mouth on my Lyman case prep station, I use this method whether it's for a bolt gun or a gas gun! The rest of my loading process is just as meticulous. YMMV