I’ve heard of questionable brass quality, especially the soft primer pockets, from Hornady for years. Traditionally I’ve given it 3 reloads and tossed it because it won’t hold primers. Saturday I was doing some 7 PRC load development and had my first instance of gasses blowing by the primer. 2 different charges, 1 67.5 gr of N570 and 1 68.5 gr of the same behind 175 gr ELD-X with Win LR Magnum primers, far from max charge of 70.1 gr. First one I saw the carbon on the case head thought it was just random but didn’t investigate. The second time I looked more closely and saw a pinhole vent between the primer and pocket. Cases were once fired from my PH3 a few weeks ago, sized and deprived, pockets cleaned, primers hand seated. Bolt face also now has to divots from the gas venting. I’ve heard of it happening but not personally seen it. Tossed those 2 cases at the range, and I’ll be paying more attention to things like this to take note in the future.
Yep. Ive had loose primers with Hornady brass on just the second firing.
The lack of quality sure does speak to spending the extra $50 per 50 cases to have quality components.
While I am not looking for competition style precision results I do like to see sub MOA performance just like everyone on this thread……. New T3x in 6.5 PRC, 50 pieces of new Hornady 6.5 PRC brass not factory ammo that has been reloaded, have fired 4 rotations using 4 different bullets and 3 different powders, multiple ladder tests with poor results generally 2.5 MOA at 100 yds. The T3x in 6.5 PRC is supposed to be a laser beam. I put the action in a new XLR chassis with a new Arken 6x24 and have checked and rechecked all the torque values from the action screws up. I finally got to taking a really close look at the brass and there was a 5.8gr delta from lightest to heaviest cases which I found amazing. I sampled 25 new cases of 300 WM Peterson brass and they were all less than 1gr apart and generally within .5 gr. I just got off the phone with the Hornady tech rep, he obviously was trained by customer service from Delta Airlines. He said they had no QC on case weight and didn’t see why a 5.8gr weight difference was significant. Maybe I am just dense but in my military mind that equates to decreased case capacity if the external dimensions are at SAAMI spec and one case weighs as much as 5.8gr more than another. No gas flow back through the primer pocket, lots of carbon down to the case shoulder break on many cases, lots of heavy bolt lifts and no group consistency. So far this has been a waste of time and components. This afternoon I plan on doing a water test to compare case capacity that Hornady suggested. Probably time to just buy Peterson brass.
After I get back from my Idaho and western Nebraska swing I’m going to bite the proverbial bullet and buy 50 pieces of ADG or Peterson 7 PRC. Hopefully they don’t have carbon all around the neck like Hornady brass does.