Graf Brass & 4064 Questions for Y'all

[Skeezix]

Recently I bought some .22-250 brass with GRAF headstamp on it from Graf & Sons since it was several dollars cheaper per 100 than Winchester or R-P.  The first thing I noticed, when I was running it through my neck size die, was that there was a variation in the rim thickness.  Some of the brass had such a thick rim that it wouldn't go into my #3 RCBS shellholder, and I had to use a Lee shellholder instead, and even then it was a tight fit with about 10% of the brass.

Then when I was seating primers in it, using my Lee Auto Prime, I noticed there was a large variation in the effort required to seat the primers.  I used Remington 9 1/2 primers.  About 65% went in with what I considered to be normal effort for new brass.  About 25% went in with higher, but still acceptable effort, but about 10% were so tight and took so much effort to seat that I'm expecting hangfires or duds at the range when I try to fire them.  

Before I load the rest of this brass, I'm going to run a primer pocket uniformer through it.  Question #1:  Have any of y'all used Graf brass and what results have you had with it?

The second thing that happened when loading this is that I ran out of an old lot of DUPONT IMR-4064 that I had been using since back in the 70's and I had to get into a lot of IMR-4064 that I had bought in the early 90's (obviously I don't use much of this powder anymore...).  With the old lot, 32.7 gr filled the cases up to the base of the neck.  With the new lot, that weight only reached the shoulder, and it took 35.5 gr to bring the level back up to the base of the neck again.  

That jogged a memory bit in the dark recesses of my feeble brain.  I used to load a lot of .308's with that old lot of 4064, and I never could approach the maximum charge weights shown in any of the loading manuals, without getting excessive pressure signs.   And I had tried lots of combinations of bullets, brass and primers with the same results.  I now believe that old lot of Dupont IMR-4064 was quite a bit hotter than normal.  Question #2: Have any of y'all had similar results with 4064?

Enquiring minds want to know....

Thanks,

[jhalcott]

I HOPE you backed off that load with your NEW batch of powder and did NOT just load 35+ grains "to the neck". Every lot of powder can be very different in power. I have had large variations in speed from different lots of powders like 760 ,748 and 785.I had a new lot of 4350 that got 100 fps more than the old lot I'd been using for 2 years.
  Please don't think I'm flaming you! An old friend who loaded his 243 from an 8# keg ran out.He bought a new keg and continued loading the rest of 100 rounds.All other components were the same ones he used before.He locked up his bolt with the 2nd round of the new lot!
  Safety first,then accuracy,finally speed!

[Graybeard]

Don't have enough experience with that powder to be of help with that. But the brass sounds like my experiences with PMC brass. Bet they made it. I refuse to use PMC for anything. Just had too many problems of that nature and others.