One of the points of frustration I've been dealing with for rifle shooting has been quality of reloads. In particular for .308 Winchester. I've been fighting some extreme velocity variation that manifested itself in a very embarrassing way at a match, with one round falling about 6-8 feet short of the target at 500 yards and slamming into the concrete berm that shields the pit crew.
That particular problem was due to my case trimmer having an oversized case mouth pilot. I've learned that I have to resize after trimming in order to get ideal case neck tension.
Last match, I shot a 176-3x from slow prone, and once I got dialed in to my zero I was ringing 9, 10 and X hits with only the rare 8. I lost out with about 8 or so rounds while I tried to "dial in" from the 7 ring. Lowest score I got on any one shot was a 7, but I walked almost all the way around the bull before finally finding the center. I could have had 10 more points if I started zeroed or at least closer to it.
However, my brass is all part of this batch of Federal once-fired stuff that gets soft easily. Then there's 100 rounds each of various other headstamps. I've got brass in so many varied stages of firing (once fired, three times fired, four times fired, Winchester, Remington, Federal, MagTech, Lake City, etc) that I can't predict how the lot will shoot.
I've been in need of some new brass for awhile, so today I ordered 500ct of Remington nickel-plated brass. The nickel will make my brass easier to distinguish from other competitors, and the lot of 500 will allow me to shoot new virgin brass at the next 8 or 9 competitions before I have to start shooting once-fired brass. It's my hope that the nickel coating will better protect brass from dings during extraction and give me extended brass life. It's about a $20 premium over standard brass in lots of 500 so it wasn't too painful as an experiment. If I get one more loading out of them than standard brass then they'll be worth it.
And the lot of 500 will make it easy to work with:
-the same headstamp
-the same firing
-in lots of cases in the same weight
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