cautery Posted October 20, 2005 Share Posted October 20, 2005 I'm getting ready to make one big brass purchase to cover me for all of next year. I'm going to buy Starline 40 S&W... Anyone else want to jump in and try to make one of the larger quantity discounts? If you are interested, PM me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flexmoney Posted October 21, 2005 Share Posted October 21, 2005 Clay, Any way I could talk you into just buying 1k of the Star Line...for your testing/BIG match purposes... Then buying once-fired Winchester (or your choice of single-headstamp once-fired) from someplace like Brassmanbrass.com...for 1/5 of the price? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChuckS Posted October 21, 2005 Share Posted October 21, 2005 I'm with Flex, why not save yourself ~$80 per 1K? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cautery Posted October 21, 2005 Author Share Posted October 21, 2005 Flex - I already have 1K on the bench for testing purposes. I'm not crazy about the idea of using once-fired brass for matches.... I'm going to be shooting full time next year. Just the lost brass matches I'm planning to shoot next year are going to eat like 7200 cases... Testing is going to eat at least 2-3K since I can't reuse the brass for that. Yeah, I'll probably cheap out and reuse brass for practice... All total, I'll probably load and shoot about 30k in 2006. I'll think about it. I dropped the order for 20K bullets today. I'll be dropping my powder/primer order in a week or so. I don't have to make the brass order immediately... but I am leaning heavily toward new brass for next year. This one big order should set me up for a while. I'll retire my old brass (WIN, R-P, etc.) and just use the "once-fired" stuff for practice. Then al I'll have to worry about replacing is the match and testing stocks. Next year is "my" year... No, I'm not going to work some miracle and become some great shooter. What I mean is that next year is just for me, to do what I want to do. There are a lot of things I am goign to give up and do without to make this happen... I don't really want to make my shooting tools part of that list... I might never get to do anything like this again in my lifetime, so I want to make the best of it. Hard to explain.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flexmoney Posted October 21, 2005 Share Posted October 21, 2005 I wish I lived close enough to you to say that I'd buy the once fired Winchester 40 brass if you didn't like it. I would guess that somebody local would be willing to take it off your hands if you needed to sell it. I have statictically zero problems running that brass. I use the Lee, 4-die set (includes the FDC) on the 650. Everything gauges...rather boringly. (BTW, I started out buying new starline too...don't tell anybody ) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cautery Posted October 21, 2005 Author Share Posted October 21, 2005 I have great respect for WIN once-fired brass... Besides the fact that it has those virtually irremovable deposits in the primer pocket, and the insides never polish up... I tis pretty good brass... never have to worry about it being safe... I've never ruptured one. But it has a very loose lenght tolerance (lot to lot?) I have to cull about 20% for being to short for my purposes... I actually have about 5K WIN brass right now. I used it in my proto #1 testing. Going "bang" isn't the problem, nor is feeding... One of the other things I am considering is the reduced time I will have for loading next year... I need to save time where I can. With the new Starline, I have NO short cases... I can just trim to length and load. That's why I bought the 1050 and RF100 today... When I have a day home to load and refit, I want to be able to do a bunch... I'm going to do component prep in my spare time on the road... When I am home, I'll need to load quickly, and spend the rest of my time working on my projects/practicing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GeneralChang Posted October 21, 2005 Share Posted October 21, 2005 (edited) Uhhh, you trim your pistol brass???? I think you need to save your money so that you can buy me and Big Lucky a steak dinner next week. Heheheehehehehehehe. Seriously, I don't recall ever having checked the length of my once fired brass. My gun and ammo has worked well for me. Edited October 21, 2005 by GeneralChang Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cautery Posted October 21, 2005 Author Share Posted October 21, 2005 LOL! Yeah, I do now... You don't know me Sheldon, but I am an incurable tinkerer. I know that no one trims pistol brass, but I' ve been working on a project on and off since 2001... Part of it involves setting a consistent headspacing on the round. The way I am doing this is by cutting my chambers shorter than SAAMI spec... On proto #3, the barrel hood to headspace shoulder is 0.844" instead of 0.850". Since 80% of all once-fired brass is longer than 0.843" (it actually averages about 0.843"), and virtually ALL NEW brass is over 0.843", I can trim all the case to the same size... about 0.843"... This yields a true 0.001" headspace 9distance between the case and breech). My theory is that loacting the round in the chamber more consistently, will yield better accuracy... (taken in conjunction with a bunch of other stuff like 0.001"-0.003" bullet jump, etc. Of course, I am doing this on a Glock, so there are some other things that have to be fixed first before the headspacing thing will yield the best results... Things like a REALLY bad extracotr design... (for these purposes), needing the barrel to be hand fitted, and the like... Function is not what al this is about... It's more about me trying to make something that already works, "More, Better, Faster..." (Some call it tilting at wind mills.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AikiDale Posted October 21, 2005 Share Posted October 21, 2005 Okay Clay, you roused my curiosity. What kind of shooting are you planning to do with this sub MOA Glock? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cautery Posted October 21, 2005 Author Share Posted October 21, 2005 Same as I am now... It's not for the sport for the most part... I just want to see if I can do it, and still have the pistol maintain most/all of its reliability. However, I DO see the benefits for the guy that can only afford a Glock to shoot IPSC with... If for the price of a smith fit barrel, he could get 1" groups at 25 yards, then his probability of making an "A" with a marginal shot would rise drastically, vs' the 3+" average group a stock Glock shoots. Sure would be good to have on those long standards stages too... "Holy Cow Standards" anyone? And it would actually not be a sub-MOA pistol... merely a 4MOA one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flexmoney Posted October 21, 2005 Share Posted October 21, 2005 Clay, What does 40 brass do when fired? Does is grow longer? Shorter? Does the length change after X amount of firings? (I think I recall reports that the brass shortens, but I am not sure. I have never paid any attention.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cautery Posted October 21, 2005 Author Share Posted October 21, 2005 Flex, as a rule in standard SAAMI spec chambers, straight wall pistol brass tends to shorten. I have never tracked it, but I suspect that if the brass is shot out of the same barrel over and over, the rate of shortening would slow and/or stop after some number of firings... I ALSO suspect that brass shortens less in tighter chambers... If the round had less room to expand laterally, then it follows that it will steal less material from the length dimension. I'd actually like to look at what the minimum chamber diameter could be and still get reliable function in a comp. pistol... You'd still need to make sure you had an adequate radius at the chamber entry, but the rest of the barrel should be ablet otighten up considerably. I further suspect that you could almost eliminate case shortening with such a barrel... If you didn't stretch the brass as far, it would tend to spring back to original dimensions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Heiter Posted October 21, 2005 Share Posted October 21, 2005 Clay, Sounds like you're getting prepared for some very good and useful experimentation. I can only assume that if you have the time/money to do this then that means that you've already resolved the other pressing issues of our time: the minimum squares of tp needed for the average wipe how many licks to the center of the tootsie pop Solving for Pi, etc. Oh well, all kidding aside, it sounds like you're striving for perfection. Maybe that in itself is motivation enough. Go for it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cautery Posted October 21, 2005 Author Share Posted October 21, 2005 John, I just love shooting. Add to that, that I like trying to make/improve things, and you have a perfect combination of activities to spend your time on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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