Rooski brass ?

[shooter575]

Figured I should reload for my Westinghouse Rooski. Looking at brass in the mail order catalogs. Midway has winchester 7.62x54 primed. It is the only brass in the book with that "primed" listing?
My guess it is Berdan primed??? Anyone know for sure? Hate to pay for Norma or Lapua brass [ouch] That winchester stuff is 12 bucks for 50. I can live with that.Unless one of you guys gots a better scource?

[trooperdan]

That brass Winchester sells is S&B and it is boxer primed. A better deal in at Graf's; they sell 7.62x54R brass a bit cheaper.

Edited to add: Looks like Graf's is out of stock... and they weren't any cheaper anyway, $25 per 50 if you use your C&R FFL for a discount.

[mike in co]

actually despite the cost, the nammo/lapua brass is well worth the bucks.

an alternative is to buy loaded s and b and save the brass, or the winchester version. but it aint lapua quality by a long shot...

[swheeler]

Dan thats not much of a discount, I bought 100 from Graf & Sons for 25.00 .
Scooter

[StarMetal]

Trooper Dan....how do you know that the Winchester brass is S & B?

I disagree with spending big bucks for lapua brass. If you take care of your brass it'll last just as long if not longer then the supposely better brass out there like lapua and norma. Actually I've found norma brass to be on the very soft side and so have alot of my friends. Alot of milsurp rifle really tear brass up too with their extractors...no sense is spending top hard earn dollars for the good brass, or so they call it. Now there definately is some really bad stuff out there like alot of the brass made in Mexico. CBC comes to mind for one that is horrible stuff.

I have some of the Graf's Rooskie brass and the lot that I got seems to be really good stuff. While back I had some Winchester brass and it certainly didn't appear to be made by S & B. S & B brass is ok, not the best tho.

Joe

[Buckshot]

.............There is varying qualities of brass but it's basicly all the same formulation of gilding metal at 95-5 percent copper-zinc. Possibly the impurities in each metal may lead to problems in quallity. I think the main thing to determine ultimate suitability is the care in the initial rolling of the sheet that the blanking is done from, and the several drawing and annealing processes.

Just Tuesday buddy Larry was shooting his M1 Carbine with some ammo he bought from a mailorder place. Brand new commercial production ammo, headstamped A-MERC. As regular as clockwork about every 3rd case split almost the total length of the body. The cases were NOT bulged in anyway. Just crap stuff.

I have a bunch of LC-45, 30-06 brass I'm assuming was wartime production, or at least with wartime haste. I have several batches of 20 which have been fired well over 30 times from my 03A1 Springfield. Granted these have been cast lead loadings, but you'd think the darn things would just wear slap out, but they just keep[smilie=2:'ing on. These were initially FL sized, trimmed and fired with full house '06 loads. After that it was a Lee collet die and cast lead. They get trimmed and annealed every 6-7 firings.

Obviously this arsenal knew it's job and the material had to have been of top notch stuff. Amazing for essentially throw away cases.

The beauty of Lapua and Norma brass is their ruthless lot testing and not being afraid to toss an entire batch that doesn't measure up. Also their brass is to the original specifications unlike some others. Their 6.5x55 is the real deal and not warmed over Mauser spec stuff. Ditto their 7.65x53 Argentine/Belgium.

Maybe 2 weeks before Graf announced they'd have 7.65x54 and all the others (eventually) I naturally ordered 100 Argentine cases and 100 Carcano cases made by Norma. Heck the 100 rnds of Carcano cost more then I paid for the carbine! I was also given a couple hundred Norma 7.62x54R cases and a like amount headstamped NNY. I eventually did get some of the Graf Argentine and Carcano cases too.

To be very honest, I can't tell any real difference between the Norma brass and the Graf stuff. But by the same token, I haven't fired either enough to see one or the other giving up the ghost faster then the other.

For the most part, other then some dimension differences (not great, but there) I've had pretty good luck with R-P and Winchester headstamped stuff too. I did get a couple boxes of R-P factory 30-36 several years ago and had 3-4 in each box fail to fire:oops:.

Kind of OT but I will NEVER EVER again buy nickeled cases. When I bought my Vaquero several years ago I bought 500 nickel 45 Colt cases. It was a polished stainless pistol so I figured nice shiney cases would be cool. Wrong! I could get maybe 3-4 firings before the mouths or bodies would split and I was not FL sizing or belling mouths excessively. In addition the plateing is starting to flake off around the mouth.

You'd think I'd have learned my lesson with 100 R-P nickel 45-70 cases that did that and ruined a Hornady size die.

..................Buckshot

[jh45gun]

The internet word is that the WIN stuff is made by S&B I have no idea as I have never bought any of the S&B to compare and really do not know if I could anyway, brass is brass as far as I am concerned I would not know good from bad unless it was cracked ect. I do know the Winchester 7.62x54 brass I bought fully loaded for the brass works fine and it seems like good brass to me. I have reloaded some and it seated the primers just fine and sized well so I cannot see anything wrong with it. I will buy more in the future. Right now I am trying to stock up on some 6.5x55 and some 7.5x55 brass before I get some more of the 762x54 brass. Jim

[StarMetal]

I go along with Buckshot's post. As to why when Winchester is a major brass producer and they sell Rooskie brass made by S & B is beyond me.

Joe

[C1PNR]

The internet word is that the WIN stuff is made by S&B I have no idea as I have never bought any of the S&B to compare and really do not know if I could anyway, brass is brass as far as I am concerned I would not know good from bad unless it was cracked ect. I do know the Winchester 7.62x54 brass I bought fully loaded for the brass works fine and it seems like good brass to me. I have reloaded some and it seated the primers just fine and sized well so I cannot see anything wrong with it. I will buy more in the future. Right now I am trying to stock up on some 6.5x55 and some 7.5x55 brass before I get some more of the 762x54 brass. Jim
Have you located some boxer primed brass for the 7.5? Willing to share your source? I'm looking for some and can't find any.

[Bob S]

I just picked up my quarterly ration of 100 .284 Win cases (to be made into 7.5 x 55) at the Bealton (VA) gun show. It's out there. If it weren't for the brass, that show would have been a total waste of time. W-A-Y too much crap that has NOTHING to do with shooting.

Resp'y,
Bob S.

[floodgate]

A friend picked me up a double handfull of once-fired 7.62 x 54R brass at the local "free fire" zone up on the BLM reserve. Some were S & B, others were marked "WIN", and they looked very similar as to color, letter and number stamps and rim chamfer. I assumed the"WIN"s are the S & B-made ones I had also heard or read about, since this is different from the "W - W" H/S Winchester uses for their own stuff. I loaded up some, though, and found that while both fed and chambered easily in my Romanian M44 (I won't talk about accuracy or leading!), the "WIN" cases wouldn't let the bolt close in the re-arsenaled and apparently un-fired M91/30; the rims were a tad too thick. I tried some of the cases from Graf and they chambered fine. I guess the 91/30 is set to tight headspace specs. Dunno what it means, but... floodgate

[jh45gun]

Have you located some boxer primed brass for the 7.5? Willing to share your source? I'm looking for some and can't find any.


Word is that Grafs is going to have some by Midsummer. I just got 20 cases from Pierre at the Swiss rifle site he was selling twenty cases to members of that board if you did not have any. IT was Grafs headstamped. He is going off the board there due to family medical problems so I guess that avenue is out. AS was mentioned 284 brass is supposed to work great after it is resized though the rim size is a bit smaller it is still supposed to work. Norma Brass is available and while expensive it is supposed to last longer I do not know I never had any. You should be able to find 284 brass online. Otherwise Wolf is supposed to have loaded boxer primed brass ammo out in a month or two. Jim

[mike in co]

the winchester 7.62 x 54r is in a lovely winchester box, and the country of origin is clearly marked on the box(not usa...). the real diff is 308 dia bullets in the win and 311 in most everyone else is loads.

if it looks like a duck and waddles like a duck, then its probably s and b ......

i may suggest you try weight sorting some of your brass, figure the volume diff due to the variation, then try the same with lapua(now nammo).

[StarMetal]

Boy....nothing is sacred anymore.

Joe