Alpha Munitions brass...

[daved20319]

So I decided to go shopping for some large primer 6.5 Creedmoor brass last night, a few folks had some on the various Classifieds, but prices for fired brass tended toward the silly side . Started working my way through the various retailers, most were either out, or only had Starline or Lapua in small primer. Finally ended up at Brownell's, and they had new Alpha brass in both primer sizes, $99/hundred, or about on par with Lapua, and cheaper than the N's. Remembered seeing some positive reviews on the 6.5 CM forum, so went ahead and ordered 100. Probably won't see them until after Christmas, but in doing some more research after the fact, I'm thinking I may have done a good thing . Will keep ya'll posted.

In the meantime, has anyone here used any, and if so, what did you think of it? Later.

Dave

Read More

 

[DizzyJ]

I have not used them. I went with the small primer brass after doing a bit of reading up.

Just curious how you made your decision on large Vs small primer?

 

[daved20319]

An interesting series of Johnny's Reloading Bench videos. He was running a 6.5 Creedmoor with small primer brass and a variety of powders. Suddenly started having hang and misfires with Vihta Vuori N540 and a variety of different primers. I just got some VV N555 specifically for loading 6.5 CM, needed more brass, and figured I'd just avoid a possible potential problem. I do have some small primer Starline, but I'm just getting started loading for the CM, so I haven't used any of it yet, just reloaded some of the factory ammo brass I started with, all of which is large primer, of course. For now, I just want to load stuff I know will go BANG!, I'll experiment with the small primer brass later.

 

[DizzyJ]

An interesting series of Johnny's Reloading Bench videos. He was running a 6.5 Creedmoor with small primer brass and a variety of powders. Suddenly started having hang and misfires with Vihta Vuori N540 and a variety of different primers. I just got some VV N555 specifically for loading 6.5 CM, needed more brass, and figured I'd just avoid a possible potential problem. I do have some small primer Starline, but I'm just getting started loading for the CM, so I haven't used any of it yet, just reloaded some of the factory ammo brass I started with, all of which is large primer, of course. For now, I just want to load stuff I know will go BANG!, I'll experiment with the small primer brass later.

That IS interesting. I've only used H4350 and Federal Gold Match AR primers. No issues in over 300 rounds so far. At least I believe that's the primer. I might have to go back and look.

 

[daved20319]

The problem was specific to VV N540, although your primer choice was one of the ones that didn't have any issue IIRC. His conclusion was simply that N540 was hard to ignite, because with all the misfires, the primer DID go off. The powder was discolored, but didn't light. He went on to try a variety of conditions, I didn't watch all the vids, but what I did watch was interesting and thorough. So like I said, since I'm going to be using a VV powder for load testing my Creedmoor, I decided to assume this is a possible issue with ALL the 500 series powders, and purchased accordingly. If things go well and I find a good load, then maybe I'll do some additional experimenting with small primer brass. Later.

Dave