Okay so I've been loading most of the usual suspects for too many years. WW, Rem, some Norma and Starline all if which get inpsection and sorted and generally there are always ten or more out of a hundred new bottleneck cases, except Norma, that get s--- canned. I've got plenty enough brass make it to the grave but I keep seeing adds for Nosler brass. Then I checked out their offerings and noticed the pricing. Wow they are more than Norma in many cases. So anybody here loading this brass and can I get some opinions and critiques on the quality and value.
I picked up 50 for $25 from midway about a year ago with a discount code. It's nice brass but not as nice as Norma. One thing I noticed though was that it was supposed to be pre prepared brass but almost all of the case mouths needed to be run thru a die to make them circular. I'm talking about 8 out of 10 that the mouth was slightly deformed. Imo you should just stick with norma brass.
I've used Nosler brass for 30-06, 7x57, and 8x68S. Never had any problems. Life of the brass was 12-15 reloads for what I was doing. It is usually a bit more expensive. I consider either Norma or Nosler interchangeably.
For comparison purposes of how I look at brass. I don't like Remington. Winchester and Starline are of average quality. Hornady is good. I liked the old Federal brass (70's & 80's), I really haven't bought new Federal brass so can't give an opinion other than I'm hearing it is too soft these days. I'm still using some of my old Federal brass.
I've used some PVI brass in 7x57 and that is working ok.
I've had Norma (Herters head stamp) brass for my 7mm Rem. Mag and wasn't impressed. Seemed very "hard" making them seemingly harder to size and the heads were "thick" making them hard to get in the shell holder. Monty ended up with them, not sure what his feelings for them are. I'll stick with RP.
Thanks for the replys but so far I haven't heard anybody explain why it's worth so much. The only Norma brass I have is 222 and the Hornet and yes it's good brass but was it worth x2 in price ? Maybe but I can't prove its better in performance. I'd like to check their cases out but not willing to shell out the pesos for something I really don't need. If I bought their brass I'd still end up checking and prepping it myself cause I just wouldn't trust it until it was done my way so why pay more for it.
Garbler, trying to explain why Noslers are more bucks is way above my pay grade. Back when they were sourcing brass from Norma, maybe the prices rubbed off on them?
I got some once fired Nosler 30-06 brass (the guy was throwing it away) at the range,
I re-sized it to 8x57 Mauser, and it had a slight edge in accuracy over factory R-P brass with the same load and bullet.
Go figure, but I can get other brass for less, and shoot more.
Norma/Nosler is made by the same company, I've used Norma and Lapua. Norma/Nosler is a bit softer than Lapua. If you want to go high end, go Lapua and watch for sale at Graf and sons or Brownells.
I use their brass in 280AI and brass I use for targets has 7/8 firings. I got 30-06/243AI that I use lapua and all three rifles were build within couple years and got about same firing.
Nosler purchased Silver State Armory and selling their brass now and I would think at some point Nosler be making their own brass.
One of our Sportsman's Warehouse stores has Nosler,Norma,Hornady,Wby rifle brass and has very little Win brass and no Rem brass.
I took a good glance at Nosler sitting right next to NORMA brass on the shelf yesterday afternoon, Norma is almost twice the price of Nosler, it was packed 25 rounds to a box and Nosler was 50 rounds per box as far as I saw?
Nosler has one box size so cases like 222 are 100 per box,30-06 size are 50 and WSM,RUM, Nosler mag and some others are 25rds per box. I agree those Norma boxes are small.
Remember their brass comes prepped and ready to load which is part of what raises the cost. I've used it in a few calibers and have no complaints. About the same water capacity as Norma which makes sense since I also heard they make a lot of the Nosler brass. Good stuff in my humble opinion.
This depends on what you mean "prepped". Most brass is for generic loading. When testing primer pocket tools, I found that every case I tried including new brass needed the primer pockets uniformed. Since all brass is punched, it also helps to uniform the flash hole.
I have to be careful when I go to the range with Norma brass and pistol brass with a TEXAS head stamp. My Norma brass came in brown boxes of 20 unprimed cases. If one of my Norma and or Texas head stamped pistol cases hits the ground a fight breaks out. I no longer shoot TEXAS brass in my slide actions. I do not loose brass when shot in a pistol with a cylinder.
Still don't say why they think their brass is worth so much. If it came with a "It'll last for X amount of reloadings and is X times more accurate" guarantee I could see maybe 1/2 what they charge.
I'll stick with RP, WW, Federal and a few Hornady (which is all I could get)
RJ
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