Good News For The 284W Crowd

[IanP]

Norma are about to do a run of match grade 284W cases!
No more necking up Lapua 6.5-284 brass
http://bulletin.accurateshooter.com/201 ... llets-com/
Ian

[Cameron Mc]

Sounds good Ian.
Will be interesting to see how the primer pockets fair.

Cheers

[RDavies]

It says they are double stamping the base to toughen it up and do an extra draw to make case walls more consistent. I use Norma brass in my other cartridges and it is known to be slightly soft, I hope this new Norma is nice and tough.
The Dasher brass might be good as well.
The only question for us will be, will we see any of it here?
They will only be making 1 million cases, so who knows if there will be enough left to send some our way.

[Brad Y]

Trouble is though- bullets.com dont send stuff to Aus. Well they wouldnt when I tried to order something. So are norma going to make it publically available or is it going to be for USA domestic market only? I still reckon theres nothing wrong with lapua. Just a bit of prep work which you would do to good match brass anyway to make sure its how you want it. Its only ever a problem for those people wanting magnum performance from a 284 that seem to have trouble with cases. In 22-250 years ago I tried norma brass and it was worth 2-3 firings and primer pockets were toast. Hope its as strong as lapua at least and priced competitively. And I hope lapua take the same lead and start making 284 brass.

EDIT- Rod beat me to it in expressing concerns about supply and strength...

[DenisA]

Currently Norma brass is expensive, I would expect a special run like this to be pretty X'y...... Full pun intended.

[Grant G]

The Dasher Brass is an exclusive deal to Bullets.com, the only source even in the states will be through them.
And it certainly is not going to be cheap!

[AlanF]

My faith in Lapua primer pockets has been revived after a scary incident last week. I started using a new 5lb container of RL-22 without working up the load, attempting to get about 2870fps with 180gn hybrids in the Shehane. I loaded 12 cases with 56.2gn and 12 with 56.6gn. The first load went quite well - held good elevation, but the second started spraying them. Having noticed more than usual recoil and a flatter trajectory than expected I decided to check the speed of the loads. I loaded a few with the lesser load and got around 3010fps . Who knows what the higher load was doing. Just to see how bad the primer pockets were, I attempted to re-use the brass that'd had the higher 56.6gn load, and only one case was what I'd call marginal - the rest were quite usable! This brass had been fired about 5 times and was then put away for 18 months - maybe that hardened it up?

[Seddo]

ill be able to get them out of the states.

[ecomeat]

I won't be getting too excited just yet .
I have used Norma 6.5 x 284 brass and just necked it up . All of that was fine, but I had far more ridiculously loose primer pockets in this brand new, unfired brass, than I have in Lapua brass that has 6 + firings. Quality Control team were all taking a break when mine went through, apparently.

I also use Nosler Custom Brass in a 280AI......made for them by Norma.......supposedly top level QA, match prepped etc and weight ranged to +\- 0.5 gr. The "Weight Ranged" claim is absolute bullshit, as I have them over 2gr weight difference out of the same box.
So with that sort of Quality Control from Norma that I have witnessed with my own eyes, I think I will happily keep using Lapua, at this point in time.

[williada]

My expectations about Norma being top brass were dashed years ago, admittedly using a .220 Swift when primer pockets opened up with mild loads. The brass was soft. I take on board Rod's point about a little extra work hardening. Unless there was no other brass of high standard I have already been bitten. You can easily soften other brass at the neck where you want it malleable but hardening at the base of the case by shooters has not been successful to my knowledge. Alan's account speaks for itself, as does Tony's.

[macguru]

I have 6.5-284 lapua brass necked up and fireformed to 284 shehane. So far I have only used 100/200 and those 3-5 times each. So far the primer pockets are tight even after warm loads and no problems

andrew

[johnk]

The 200 replacements that NIOA gave me necked up to .30 are working OK so far, but that's only a couple of loads.

Talking from the old rocking chair with the youngsters seated around me, I have most of 300 .308 Norma cases I bought when handloading was first allowed for TR because I was buggered if I was going to mess with the ADI two hole stuff. Those cases were loaded around 25 times before I was given 500 ex-military Laupas & pensioned them off. Admittedly, I didn't push my TR loads, but that brass is still as sweet as it was the day it was made.

[AlanF]

I have 6.5-284 lapua brass necked up and fireformed to 284 shehane. So far I have only used 100/200 and those 3-5 times each. So far the primer pockets are tight even after warm loads and no problems

andrew

Andrew,

I've found the following two lots to be okay : P00620601, P00701403. Are yours from either of these?

BTW what do rate as a "warm" load in terms of velocity with 180s in the Shehane? And I won't hold you to it because chronos can't be trusted in terms of absolute values. I have 3 chronos in series and they sort of agree. I try to keep loads sub 2900, but after the 3000+ incident, I'll be trying in the 2950 area now, just in case there's a nice node lurking around there .

Alan

[Craig McGowan]

I've found the following two lots to be okay : P00620601, P00701403. Are yours from either of these?


Alan

That is good to know Alan. I have 8 boxes of the 1403.........call it dooms day preping for 2017

[AlanF]

.......call it dooms day preping for 2017

In my opinion the best prepping for 2017 (for the individuals at least) will be doing some Bisley style matches!