Weighing brass

[bubbadoyle]

When you sort brass by weight how closely do you sort them?  Anything within .1 .5 or 1 grain.  I have never weighed my brass before and I am just really starting top try to work up an accurate load for my 22-243 so I need to know what my group weights should be. 

[Patriot_1776]

What kind of accuracy are you looking for, and what ranges?  For most sporting reasons, I don't find it worth the effort.  I find the most important factors for accuracy to be the powder type, and charge weight.  I try to find the powder most suited to the cartridge and bullet weight I want to load, and work from there. 

As far as case prep. helping groups, the most important I've found are making sure you trim and chamfer when needed  This is especially so with new brass.  Having trimmed all the case necks to the same specs help them hold or "grip" the bullet with better consistency.  When starting with new brass, I neck-size first, then trim and chamfer.  As a rule of thumb when you're going to trim the cases, do so after resizing them.  After that, they're ready to go in my books.  For the record, I've never had a problem achieving good groups under these lines.

[Questor]

I've got a book on getting maximum accuracy from rifles. It's published by Precision Shooting. There is an awful lot of detail in there about case preparation, but weighing isn't part of it.

[Sir Charles deMoutonBlack]

The volume of ONE grain of powder equals the volume of EIGHT grains of brass.

The answers posted above are based on the degree of accuracy you are looking for.  Keep this ratio i( 8 to 1) in mind when switching lots or types of brass.  I use a lot of range pickups, and record their average weight.  I can then choose types of brass for similar loads.  Mostly I do this for high volume shooting, like pistols & other CAS firearms.  Also I load very conservatively.

Stick to new brass of a reputable make for hot loads, or where accuracy is at a premium.

[victorcharlie]

When I weighed brass, and I don't anymore, I wanted to be within 3 grains.  I'm not sure why I picked that number, possibly because the weight varies so wildly that if I tried to get closer than that I wouldn't have any brass.

At one time I'd plug the primer hole, fill the case with water and then CC the water out with a syringe.

There are significant accuracy gains to be had by reloading.  You can spend a lot of time on things such as weighing cases and not really get much in return.  If your shooting a "trued" and "blueprinted" rifle, with known chamber dimensions and custom made dies then maybe it's worth it.

On a factory rifle, there's not much return on investment and I doubt you'll see much in the way of an accuracy increase.  Try it and post  your results please....

[Redhawk1]

I have never weighed brass, I have heard of people doing it, but if I am not shooting in competitions I say why bother. There are other factors that are more important than case weight. JMHO. 

[Catfish]

Befor you ever start to weigh your brass you have to size them, trim them and neck turn them so that all other thing are equal. If your shooting a factory chamber, or ever a customt camber that is not tight necked you will shorten the life of your brass so much that if you trun the necks the cost will out weigh the benifits. If you really want to sort brass for a factory chamber I would recomand that you do it with a cronograph. Load your accuracy load and then through out the brass that is to far from your average velosity. These case are probibly larger or smaller than in case volume than your other cases, or it could be that the necks are thicker.

[The Sodbuster]

I don't weigh brass in order to sort by weight for accuracy.  But I find it interesting to weigh different brands of brass for a given cartridge.  Some brands are heavier than others and will therefore have less case capacity.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but I presume heavier brass loaded with the same powder charge as developed in lighter brass will develop higher pressures.  That's one of the reasons why you should work up a load again if you change your brand of brass.

[beemanbeme]

Life is too short to weigh brasss.  I fire form my brass and then I prep it.  During the fire forming, if a  round is considerably errant, I just pitch it.  After 1x, I prep it and load it for whatever use it's gonna be put to and again as I practice with it, any flyers are culled.  Sometimes, depending on what use the ammo is gonna be used for, it doesn't take much for a round to be considered a flyer.

[davem270win]

I rarely weigh brass, and only when I am looking for the last bit of accuracy from a rifle. I set up a "bell curve" on my bench, and line up cases vertically by weight, from lightest to heaviest. I then discard the 'ends' - the 10 percent or so that are way off from the average. It's mostly an interesting exercise, and generally a waste of time, unless you're dealing with a target rifle.