New vs Old Brass

[Bassfish1952]

I have resized 6.5 Grendel , Starline and once fired Hornady brass . Is there a noticeable difference in performance using one or the other ?

[dfosland]

In the variety of calibers I shoot and reload, new vs. previously fired is minimal, having consistently sized brass is more important than new or used. However, reloading does take its toll on brass, the work hardening at the neck/shoulder is noticeable the most, which is where annealing comes in. Trimming, primer pocket uniformity, even cleaning the flash hole can make a difference when you are chasing that last little bit of precision.

Because I'm not in the competitions, I don't go that far, more interested in depopulating varmints and the like.

Reminds me I need to order the trim setup for my ARC brass, I use the Giraud trimmer, which trims for length and does the inside and outside at the same time.

[SpeyRod]

I have the Giraud for 223 and love it. Bought the Frankford universal trimmer because I’m cheap and load so many calibers. Works great but have to debur and chamfer the brass.

[Lemonaid]

I have found that the Starline brass is superior in that it needs less prep work, does not need primer pocket uniforming or flash hole deburring. Even better is actual Starline 6 ARC brass as it eliminates the lube, reforming, anneal, trim, cleaning steps with 6.5 Grendel brass. Also it will not be confused with other reformed brass with the same 6.5 Grendel head stamp. The price is about the same as Hornady and availability of Starline seems to be better.
I have not shot the Starline brass enough to comment about durability but I suspect it will be close to the same.

[Bassfish1952]

I have found that the Starline brass is superior in that it needs less prep work, does not need primer pocket uniforming or flash hole deburring.  Even better is actual Starline 6 ARC brass as it eliminates the lube, reforming, anneal, trim, cleaning steps with 6.5 Grendel brass.  Also it will not be confused with other reformed brass with the same 6.5 Grendel head stamp.  The price is about the same as Hornady and availability of Starline seems to be better.
I have not shot the Starline brass enough to comment about durability but I suspect it will be close to the same.

Back during the shortage I bought 1 pack of 100 6.5 brass, had thought about selling or giving away. But since then got 1000 6arc starline brass and about 200 once fired Hornady. So was wondering about running the same load in different brass
New to reloading , still learning so wasn't sure about anything .  Now I'm going to use the starline 6arc brass, then the Hornady then go back to the 6.5 brass. Since I am a hunter with very little range time thrown in should be 6-8 years before I get thru all the new 6arc starline brass and have to worry about changing over.

My mind spins every time I try to form a plan on what I'm doing . My original thought was to reload so I could run the Hornady 90gr GMX/CX bullets then changed to the 103ELD-X but trying for a better round for my bolt gun.Now I spend more time thinking about which way to go than I do actually doing anything 

Thanks for the comment

[grayfox]

You've got 1000 of pretty uniform, 6 Arc brass, so roger, will take you a few years to go all the way through it.
Lots of shooters cycle fresh brass once with any fire-forming load, then concentrate on using the fired brass b/c it's more conformed to their particular rifle/chamber. For myself, I go to "some" degree of uniformity but not to the n-th degree. So I've got a lot of fresh starline (but not 1K!) so develop a consistent load in that fresh brass... once it gets all the way through I will re-formulate for the 1x-fired.

What I'm finding in lots of calibers when keeping everything else the same (and I mean Everything) except the once (or 2x or whatever)-fired vs fresh brass, is fresh brass loses some energy to the chamber-forming, so shoots a bit slower than the fire-formed brass (less available energy to push the bullet). (The factory shoulder/oal is pretty much always shorter than both your chamber and what you will re-size it to, so it will take some amount of energy that first time to "blow forward" the shoulder to where it will be ever after. ) But for a 1000 pieces you will undoubtedly change over something in the powder, powder lot etc, or primer lot, or bullet lot, etc, so might as well shoot that thousand first, then worry about adapting your load to all the once-fired.

I have some 308 brass from various mfrs, and several lots of Lake city of various years. A couple of them shoot pretty much alike, but that's been the exception rather than the rule. It has mostly to do with the interior volume of the case, and thus the pressure curve that the powder will generate. If by some chance you have 2 types of brass with identical (or very very close) chamber interior volumes, then they will likely exhibit the same or very very similar MVs and pressure curves. But in the vast majority of cases (lol!) that won't be, so the different cases will show different MVs and pressure curves. There's probably 10 or 20 different ways/dimensional parts to a brass case that can cause its interior volume to vary. So we keep the mfr, times-fired (I call them 0, 1x, 2x, etc) and maybe even the rifle they go in, separated in little sandwich bags or plastic bins (or whatever), and label them to avoid mixing them up and causing us some surprise at the range or in the field... I have 2 brands of 308 brass, that for everything else the same, shoots 150 fps different from each other... so the one was over-pressure! shocked me! (no kabooms or anything but definitely a surprise when I saw the MV numbers).

[Bassfish1952]

You've got 1000 of pretty uniform, 6 Arc brass, so roger, will take you a few years to go all the way through it.
Lots of shooters cycle fresh brass once with any fire-forming load, then concentrate on using the fired brass b/c it's more conformed to their particular rifle/chamber.  For myself, I go to "some" degree of uniformity but not to the n-th degree.  So I've got a lot of fresh starline (but not 1K!) so develop a consistent load in that fresh brass... once it gets all the way through I will re-formulate for the 1x-fired. 

What I'm finding in lots of calibers when keeping everything else the same (and I mean Everything) except the  once (or 2x or whatever)-fired vs fresh brass, is fresh brass loses some energy to the chamber-forming, so shoots a bit slower than the fire-formed brass (less available energy to push the bullet).  (The factory shoulder/oal is pretty much always shorter than both your chamber and what you will re-size it to, so it will take some amount of energy that first time to "blow forward" the shoulder to where it will be ever after. )  But for a 1000 pieces you will undoubtedly change over something in the powder, powder lot etc, or primer lot, or bullet lot, etc, so might as well shoot that thousand first, then worry about adapting your load to all the once-fired.

I have some 308 brass from various mfrs, and several lots of Lake city of various years.  A couple of them shoot pretty much alike, but that's been the exception rather than the rule.  It has mostly to do with the interior volume of the case, and thus the pressure curve that the powder will generate.  If by some chance you have 2 types of brass with identical (or very very close) chamber interior volumes, then they will likely exhibit the same or very very similar MVs and pressure curves.  But in the vast majority of cases (lol!) that won't be, so the different cases will show different MVs and pressure curves.  There's probably 10 or 20 different ways/dimensional parts to a brass case that can cause its interior volume to vary.  So we keep the mfr, times-fired (I call them 0, 1x, 2x, etc) and maybe even the rifle they go in, separated in little sandwich bags or plastic bins (or whatever), and label them to avoid mixing them up and causing us some surprise at the range or in the field... I have 2 brands of 308 brass, that for everything else the same, shoots 150 fps different from each other... so the one was over-pressure!  shocked me! (no kabooms or anything but definitely a surprise when I saw the MV numbers).

I get involved in the extra noise and forget where I am headed sometimes. I decided back during the shortage that having extra never hurts .  My one concern was powder and primers but after posts on here anything I buy will last past my effective expiration date so I stocked up on Brass bought enough bullets , powder and primers to learn what loads I want to shoot. I will complete my buying then . Plan is 1000 brass and powder , primers and bullets to match once I know. While I can I want to stock up and avoid any shortages later. To me the most important is getting a couple of good loads that shoot in my rifle and then duplicate , duplicate , duplicate .