[21Carrier]

Well, I FINALLY ordered a chronograph, and the tracking info says it will be here tomorrow! Unfortunately, I'm going to be out of town until tomorrow night, so it looks like the first tests will have to wait until Thursday or so. I got a Competition Electronics ProChrono. As soon as it gets here and I have a chance to get out to my shooting venue, I will test all of the wax tube loads. Obviously, I will test function first, and figure out how to use it well before doing the wax tube loads. I only have a few of some of the bullets, so I don't want to waste them if I set it up incorrectly. Anyway, stay tuned, I'll post velocity results of all of the loads in the wax tube thread as soon as I have them.

Also, the other day I was doing some loading with my old "worn out" brass. This is the same brass with which I've had neck tension issues. The day I bought my G29 (April 1st), I bought 150 180gn American Eagle rounds, and 20 CorBon Hunter 180gn BCSP. I saved the brass, and used it for a long time. The AE brass was Federal (FC), and the CorBon used Remington (R-P), all yellow brass. I also had 200-300 Remington nickel from a bunch of 180gn Rem UMC. The AE and Rem yellow have 10+ loadings, while the Rem nickel have about 6-7. I have noticed neck tension issues with most of this brass, but only with 150-155gn bullets. So that's the background.

Well, the other night I was loading some 165gn bullets (Zero 165gn JHP) in the mixed (Fed/Rem) yellow brass, and some 200gn XTPs in the Rem nickel. As I was loading all of these, I would check each finished round for neck tension by pressing each round against my desk with about 40lb of pressure. All of the 200gn XTPs turned out to be fine. However, I produced VERY easy set-back on about 8 of the 50 165gn rounds. I set them aside as I was loading so that I could pull the rounds down later. Well, when I finished I looked at the set-back rounds and noticed they were ALL Remington brass. NONE of the Federal brass had the problem.

So, apparently, the Remington brass has issues with losing neck tension, whether it be yellow or nickel. I thought I was having neck tension issues with the old Federal brass as well, but I was wrong. I just figured I would put this out there so everyone else can learn from it.

To recap, Remington brass (yellow or nickel) seems to lose neck tension faster than Federal or Starline. Also, Remington seems to be STRONGER. It shows less case head expansion with the same load when compared to Starline or Federal. I like the Remington brass for its strength, but do not like the reduced brass life. However, if you exclusively load 180gn+ bullets, this should not be an issue. Finally, the Rem yellow brass survived about 10-12 loadings before showing reduced neck tension, while the Rem nickel only made it to about 6-8 loadings. I'd guess 90% of the loads were "hot".

[_The_Shadow]

Good luck with the Chrono...That will add a new insight to your loading data.

I have re-adjusted my expander plug which helped the neck tention some but I am going to reduce the size on my expander plug to help neck tension even more. This should keep from over expanding the cases. I need to take some measurements to verify before and after.