Grendel Brass Comparisons

[Old Bob]

I've recently acquired some new 6.5 Grendel brass from three different manufacturers... Hornady, Lapua & PPU. I got 200 of each brand. I weighed 20 random cases from each batch. I was a bit surprised to find both Hornady & Lapua averaged the same 112.6 grains. I thought the Lapua brass would be a little bit heavier. For both brands, the lightest case was 111 grains & the heaviest was 114ish (113.8 Hornady/114.3 Lapua). The PPU brass weighed in at 120 to 124 grains. About ten grains heavier than the other two!

This info might already be known to most members here who are diligent in their reloading practices but it might helpful for our newer home brewers.

[LRRPF52]

[lazyengineer]

Cool. Load up the Lapua and PPU as field brass, and keep the Hornady as recover and reuse brass.

[StoneHendge]

Did you calculate the variances on the weights? Lapua's was less than half of Hornady's when I got mine years ago. Would be interesting to see if that holds today.

[Old Bob]

Cool. Load up the Lapua and PPU as field brass, and keep the Hornady as recover and reuse brass.

I've never done any extensive reloading of Lapua or PPU brass in any caliber. What are the deficiencies in those two brands in 6.5 Grendel that would make them only once used field brass? At their cost, I would think I should get more than one loading from the Lapua brass.

[Old Bob]

Did you calculate the variances on the weights? Lapua's was less than half of Hornady's when I got mine years ago. Would be interesting to see if that holds today.

I didn't really see any variances between the Hornady & Lapua brass. Each of the 20 pieces of the two brands I weighed pretty much matched each other piece per piece. There were basically the same amount of cases at 111 grains, 112 grains & 113 grains in each lot sample. The only outlier was one Lapua case at 114.3 grains. Perhaps I'll open up a couple more 50 case bags & weigh 20 more cases from each bag. Their external dimensions were even the same... length, head diameter & rim diameter. Their appearances were different: The Hornady cases are shinier & the Lapua cases have annealed necks/shoulders.

[grayfox]

Lapua is worth holding on to also, hornady if you shoot that the most of course. But Lapua is probably a better case from what I've read on here. I don't own any of the big "L" but do have hornady, starline and a few federals. Federals are soft and worth only 1-2 firings after the factory round. PPU again idk but if they are LRP then useful as field loads I would guess.

O, I do have some Branes from 115 tac-tx factory loads. I will be looking those over at some point maybe.

ps watch out for those Lapua cases they typically have a smaller diameter flash hole, so your standard de-capping pin will be too fat for them.

[lazyengineer]

I've never done any extensive reloading of Lapua or PPU brass in any caliber. What are the deficiencies in those two brands in 6.5 Grendel that would make them only once used field brass? At their cost, I would think I should get more than one loading from the Lapua brass.

Oh, was feeling sparky on that one. But yea, there's been a string of posts about brass problems from rings (and kaboom), involving Lapua (and Starline) brass in particular. But never the Hornady. PPU has a rep of being a bit too soft. Almost no posts complaining about issues seem to involve Hornady. A lot of this is anecdotal on just a few posts - but more than just one.
Here:


This is what people some people are reporting in this forum (and several other forums) seeing with Lapua and Starline brass:
IMG_1309[1].jpg
Right there in the critical pressure holding location. Repeat everything the same with Hornady - no ring.

Aside from that - here's one thing I have learned - brass has a loss rate and is a consumable. Lapua is very very expensive - on the order of $1 a case, while Hornady is (or was) free on the ground, or (was) $0.30/case otherwise. Or otherwise readily available as factory ammo sourced.

So what happens with Lapua is you buy 100 cases? I run an AR15, which spits brass, and no, I don't run a brass catcher. Go shooting. Pick up 99 cases. Then 98, then 94. You never have enough for bulk loading, and your base inventory is constantly bleeding away. Because you aren't spending $1000 on just empty brass casings. But if you run Hornady, you buy 300. Shoot 100 a session and pick up 99, then 96, then 102, then 94. And as you run low, easy and cheap (when the world isn't mad) to supplement. that's what I like about Hornady. Well, that, and the lack of threads saying "why is my brass head (the part that keeps you gun from Kaboom), having these wierd brass rings forming?", that I keep seeing now with Lapua threads. With one or Two "my gun blew up, amd I didn't screw up powder charge" threads, that never seem to include Hornady Brass.

This isn't going to make me a lot of friends, as the most serious and expert members, with more knowledge than me, seem to really like Lapua. But I sure don't. It's a semi- exotic, requiring semi-exotic logistics management, and now apparently it's doing weird stuff. That's the whole reason I went Grendel is it's the least exotic of the enhanced capable ar15 rounds with legs and umph. I'm going with the most common brass I can get for that.

[Old Bob]

Lapua is worth holding on to also, hornady if you shoot that the most of course. But Lapua is probably a better case from what I've read on here. I don't own any of the big "L" but do have hornady, starline and a few federals. Federals are soft and worth only 1-2 firings after the factory round. PPU again idk but if they are LRP then useful as field loads I would guess.

O, I do have some Branes from 115 tac-tx factory loads. I will be looking those over at some point maybe.

ps watch out for those Lapua cases they typically have a smaller diameter flash hole, so your standard de-capping pin will be too fat for them.

I have Starline brass as well but didn't add them to my comparisons 'cause they have already been sized (or resized to 6mm ARC) & primed. I know about the small flash holes in Lapua brass. Agree... Federal brass ain't worth reloading. Learned that trying to reload Fed .223 Rem brass. My PPUs do have small rifle primer pockets. I have factory PPU Grendel ammo as well. Will try to reload those cases once to see how they function in my rifles. If they behave like the Fed brass, my new PPU brass will only get loaded one time.

[Old Bob]

Oh, was feeling sparky on that one. But yea, there's been a string of posts about brass problems from rings (and kaboom), involving Lapua (and Starline) brass in particular. But never the Hornady. PPU has a rep of being a bit too soft. Almost no posts complaining about issues seem to involve Hornady. A lot of this is anecdotal on just a few posts - but more than just one.
Here:


This is what people some people are reporting in this forum (and several other forums) seeing with Lapua and Starline brass:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]18756[/ATTACH]
Right there in the critical pressure holding location. Repeat everything the same with Hornady - no ring.

Aside from that - here's one thing I have learned - brass has a loss rate and is a consumable. Lapua is very very expensive - on the order of $1 a case, while Hornady is (or was) free on the ground, or (was) $0.30/case otherwise. Or otherwise readily available as factory ammo sourced.

So what happens with Lapua is you buy 100 cases? I run an AR15, which spits brass, and no, I don't run a brass catcher. Go shooting. Pick up 99 cases. Then 98, then 94. You never have enough for bulk loading, and your base inventory is constantly bleeding away. Because you aren't spending $1000 on just empty brass casings. But if you run Hornady, you buy 300. Shoot 100 a session and pick up 99, then 96, then 102, then 94. And as you run low, easy and cheap (when the world isn't mad) to supplement. that's what I like about Hornady. Well, that, and the lack of threads saying "why is my brass head (the part that keeps you gun from Kaboom), having these wierd brass rings forming?", that I keep seeing now with Lapua threads. With one or Two "my gun blew up, amd I didn't screw up powder charge" threads, that never seem to include Hornady Brass.

This isn't going to make me a lot of friends, as the most serious and expert members, with more knowledge than me, seem to really like Lapua. But I sure don't. It's a semi- exotic, requiring semi-exotic logistics management, and now apparently it's doing weird stuff. That's the whole reason I went Grendel is it's the least exotic of the enhanced capable ar15 rounds with legs and umph. I'm going with the most common brass I can get for that.

Ah yes! I've seen all those posts about some Grendel brass growing belts around their case heads. Will hope & pray those problems experienced by others are just anomalies particular to their own set-ups (I guess I'm just an optimist). If I experience the same problems, I'll let you know.

[VASCAR2]

[Old Bob]

Thanks VASCAR2...

[kmon]

I do not remember the difference in case volume now but the difference in loads between Hornady and Lapua brass fot the boltaction was enough that it got me out of an accuracy and a small increase in the charge in the Hornady brass got me in that node.

The lapua brass I have has less capacity than the Hornady I have checled.

[LRRPF52]

Cool. Load up the Lapua and PPU as field brass, and keep the Hornady as recover and reuse brass.

[lazyengineer]

I have no doubt that's all true. The appeal of Hornady is that it's apparently more forgiving to the layman who doesn't know his individual system components and load are imperfectly tuned.