Match Brass

[Kerplow]

I've pretty much just been buying cheap ammo for plinking and saving the cases for reloading. I've recently acquired a bunch of .223 match brass from various manufactures from a buddy who doesn't mind spending $20 on a box of .223.

If I'm loading for precision how important is "match" brass in the mix?

[brando]

The "match" designation is all about uniformity, nothing else. Brass and bullets that are considered match quality are very uniform in dimension and mass. Cheap brass and bullets with have wide variation from piece to piece and for plinking this won't make a difference, but for precision shooting it'll make a significant difference, especially when you shoot faaaaaar.

So in your case, the common thing to do is process the brass then weigh each and group them by a range of weight. It's up to you how much you want to vary, but what you'll notice is that most will be grouped around a particular weight range with stragglers out on the edges with much higher or lower than average weight. You want to cull the outliers and use the brass that is in the average zone. How anal you want to get on what defines the average zone is up to you.

[Jonathan Doe]

I have used regular FC 308 brass with a good success. The match brass is more uniform as I have measured it. For my precision shooting, ie. 600 yard portion of national match course, I use match brass only (Federal, LC match, or Lapua). One less thing I need to worry about.