Ok,
Regarding the relative "hardness" of Lapua brass, I know nothing of brass composition, only how it acts.
You can get .243/308 brass or 22-250 brass from a variety of mfgrs, Rem, Win, Fed, Lapua, Norma, Hornady etc........of all the available brass, Lapua will give you the highest velocity AND good caselife. Winchester runs a close second with all others lagging at least 100fps behind.
For immediate comparison let's just stick with Norma and Lapua since they're manufactured to similar standards of uniformity. Anyone who's taken the time to use them both has found that if you work up a stiff load in Lapua brass and then try to achieve the same velocity/pressure using Norma you're doomed to fail. Same rifle, same everything and you simply cannot get the same performance out of Norma brass. Same with 6BR, Norma makes gorgeous 6BR brass, NOBODY uses it. Why? because you CANNOT compete using Norma brass. Norma brass fails before a usable competitive pressure is achieved. Sure matches have been won with Norma brass.........Matches have been won with Win or any other brass you'd care to name but for pure-dee Benchrest accuracy you will be hard-pressed to find ONE entrant in a field of thousands that isn't Lapua. The only people not using Lapua are those who don't know any better, or who've chosen a design-path which precludes Lapua or those who're still trying to prove something. Or those precious few who've run into a windfall of "something else" and are willing to risk thousands of dollars on the brass they've got. Some like GD Tubb simply took the bull by the horns and MADE something from thin air........in Tubb's case he spent the time and money to develop a case specifically to address these issues, a case which was then eclipsed by the 6.5X47 case, bad timing.
Lapua makes the toughest brass available, by a wide margin. There are some other exotic European contenders but for currently available and easily obtainable brass Lapua rules the roost. This isn't some "perception" it's simply fact.
BUT.........this isn't ALL of the story.
I realize that this is the factory/hybrid board but it's STILL Bench Rest Central not Grunting Around The Communal Rock Central so my view will be from the standpoint of Extreme Accuracy.
A group of us extremists have been looking for a better 22-250/.308 case for literally years.............12 yrs in my case. You see, for a case to REALLY make pressure it must not only be HARD but it must have a small primer and flashhole.....I've got boxes of URBR brass, the ORIGINAL Bench Rest case......useless junk. I called Kaltron-Pettibone several times over a 5yr period begging them to get Lapua make a run of small-primer .308 or 22-250 brass, preferably with undrilled flashholes. I stayed in contact with GD Tubb from day one with his 6XC case. I got samples and feedback on all of the three runs of brass, all three "generations" so to speak. No dice. I completely shelved my 6MM longrange projects and developed a 30HBR case from Lapua .308 brass which looks pretty weird but shoots well.............but it will NOT make good pressure. About 3250 W/112-118's tops.......
And THEN!!!! HHOOOWWAAUUGGHHHhhhhhhhhHHH!!!! Lapua came out with a BRAND NEW case, the 6.5X47. They did EVERYTHING right on it!.
This new case is the BEANS!
It is the ultimate 22-250/308 size case. AND lapua brought it out in a good necksize at 6.5. I doubt that I'll ever shoot it in 6.5 but that's not the point.
The point is that it's ULTIMATE BRASS.........it's a case from which to build wonderful things. It's what the URBR case SHOULD have been.
To illustrate;
The 6PPC simply IS the Benchrest round of choice for a variety of reasons, IMO the single BIGGEST REASON is that no one makes good factory available 6PPC cases. And every time someone DOES make one the BR community spurns it...........it gets tried, it doesn't agg, it goes away. The REAL reason that the 6PPC is such a world-beater is that making GOOD brass is required. You will not win unless you make your brass, or have it made, from .220 Russian cases. It's that simple. Most folks don't know why.
MAKING brass either in 6X47 or 30X47 from the new Lapua case offers the exact same advantages.............it gives one opportunity to make cases which will agg. It forces people to actually fit their brass to their rifle which is key to accuracy.
Given an accurate platform it's dead easy to test all of this, it just takes time. All you have to do is make brass from several different makers and by several different methods.......
Some loads will be fireformed with some slop, like .002-.005 like any "normal" chamber.
Some will be fireformed with slop but you will "seat the bullets long".
Some brass will be fireformed with grease on them so that they "slide back in the chamber".
Some loads will be tried each way and for each brand of brass.
And SOME loads will be set up to jam against the shoulder for fireforming.
Different methods, different brands of brass.
When the testing is done and the dust settles it will be found that yes! Properly fireformed brass will absolutely agg better than improperly fireformed stuff and YES! Lapua brass is magic!
To answer your specific question Henrya, YES Lapua brass will out-perform the others regardless of conditions........but more telling, ONLY Lapua brass will give you that winning edge.
I've spent some time and money testing this.
I've got 5 different 6BR chambers, no not 5 chambers from the same reamer but 5 different reamers. I've also got 5 different 6BR barrels cut with the SAME reamer but all with slightly different headspace. I've got barrels which have been re-chambered 3 times...........same barrel, same rifle, three chambers. And I've spent endless hours actually shooting this stuff head-to-head. I went so far as to order 2 Krieger 6MM barrels from the same production run, tapered the same, identical as they could be. I chambered one in 6BR and one in 6PPC just to see if I could see the difference between a "production cartridge" and the 6PPC. My original intent was to agg them and then switch them around........swap chambers. I never finished the test. I didn't finish the test because I learned what I wanted to know, I'd been chasing the wrong thing. I now apply Benchrest Technique (6PPC brass forming technique) to a wide variety of cases. They SHOOT!
Even the .243AI will shoot pretty good for a round or two but then, just as you've formed a good case you run into problems maintaining it.........the long 40* shoulder doesn't respond well to FL sizing.
FIRST one must fireform a case to perfect fit, THEN one must devise a way to MAINTAIN that perfect fit.
Much easier said than done.
But when it's done it's a marvelous thing. A perfect case will last literally forever. I've fired 6BR cases until the flashholes were burnt out into weird shapes and the necks were wearing thin from abrasion. IMO a case doesn't even start to shoot right until it's been "seasoned" by about three firings.
But hey........these last are just MY OPINIONS.
The part about the Lapua brass being more durable is FACT.
The part about the 6BR/PPC cases with their small flashholes and small primer pockets performing 'WAYYY beyond their size is FACT.
The part about the new 6.5X47 case being a world-beater is IMO FACT!!
LOL
Time will tell, it's still in its infancy.
Ohhh, yeahh and Henrya, that part about blowing up actions
I was in gunsmithing school when I met a gentleman who was really interested in the 6.5 Arisaka's. Julian hatcher or PO Ackley or one of those Giants had made the statement that two of the strongest bolt actions on the planet were the much maligned Krag-Jorgensen and the Arisaka. This fellow proceeded to blow some stuff up! I thought at the time that it was insane. I then met another guy who'd done the same thing.............then I ended up building a rifle on a Rock Island Arsenal Springfield by accident........and then I got wind of a couple of actions that had been destroyed cosmetically........and then I got curious about just how much pressure WAS built into a small ring action that had been chambered to a magnum.......and then I got ahold of some actions that had been through a fire........one thing led to another and I've been around some pressure and destruction.
Right now I've got a sporterized Springfield 30-06 in one of my vises just waiting to be blown apart...........problem is, I've been instructed to blow it up in such a way that I can use it as a demonstration piece in our Hunter Safety class...... Really, a fellow donated it to the class and has asked me to show what a blown up action looks like. It's got a bulged barrel from some earlier mishap and instead of re barreling it he's asked me to blow it apart. We've got broken shotguns and pistols, we've got the pictures of the defective Sako's that are floating around. We've even got access to one of them, one with the classic curled out fluted pattern barrel rupture. We've got examples of magazine detonations and loaded guns that have been through fires.....but real honest-to-goodness pressure failures of bolt-actioned rifles are few and far between.
I've learned one thing from being around (controlled) action failures........it takes one hellacious amount of pressure and only one out of twenty actually LOOKS impressive. I'm stymied as to exactly HOW to get this one to where I want it. I want it ruptured, most of them just crack and bulge. I'm probably going to drive a bullet about 3" down the bore and then fire another one onto it using Bullseye........this will all happen down on the HE testing range under an explosive mat of course.
See, the thing is, speculation on "safety" just isn't in me.........The Good Lord only gifted me with two eyes and ears and at 45yrs I've still got perfect hearing and 20-20 vision..........I don't MESS with that! I wear sunglasses and earmuffs while I mow my lawn. My dad thinks I'm crazy but then he don't hear so well
I DO NOT take the prospect of action failure or brass failure lightly.
I believe that Lapua brass will allow you to SAFELY go where you will not go with another brand..............just like race cars are built safe, so are BR chamberings, done right.
Whewww my fingers are sore
All that and the steenking post is so long nobody will prolly even GET this far......
Ohh well, I mean well.
LOL
al
