Many of you are familiar with Starline- manufacturer of fine reloading brass. Recently, Starline has expanded their product offerings to include a selection of bottleneck rifle cases- in many popular chamberings (see Starline’s press release). I just got my hands on a bunch of this brass, and wanted to give you an “up close look” at these new products from Starline. This will be a great way to “kick things off” with more in-depth content featuring this new rifle brass coming up.
6.5 Creedmoor
If you’ve been in-tune with precision rifle sports in the last few years, you’ve witnessed just how much “momentum” the 6.5 Creedmoor cartridge has gained. This increased interest in 6.5 Creedmoor is understandable: it’s got great ballistics, is suitable for hunting, can be a real tack-driver, is well-suited for longer ranges, and has reasonable recoil. The one trade-off shooters have dealt with 6.5 Creedmoor in the past is the limitations of large rifle primers: less tolerant to higher pressures, and a tad less consistent in burn rate/energy. But large rifle primers have their place: they are less susceptible to temperature fluctuations, and are a tad more reliable overall. Enter Starline- you can pick which primer size works best for you, because they now offer 6.5 Creedmoor in both large and small primer pocket configurations! I can’t wait to see how these two options for primers compare, and I’ll be sure to share those results with you!
More details are available at the Starline product pages here:
Starline 6.5 Creedmoor (Large Rifle Primer)
Starline 6.5 Creedmoor (Small Rifle Primer)
300 Blackout
Imagine giving your AR-15 the best of “both worlds” – potent sub-sonic and super-sonic capabilities with only a barrel swap. That’s the beauty of 300 Blackout! If you reload 300 Blackout, now you can buy this brass from Starline! I’m very much looking forward to reloading and shooting more 300 Blackout, and will be publishing stories in the future related to this awesome AR-15 chambering!
For more information, check out the Starline Product Page for 300 Blackout.
243 Winchester
I personally really like .243 Winchester because of it’s awesome flat trajectory, really light recoil (For a 308 derivative), and versatility (good both for target shooting and hunting). This 6mm 308 wildcat has been popular for decades for these reasons. And now you can reload .243 Winchester ammunition using Starline brass! I’ve got more ballistics and ladder testing to do with .243 Winchester for my Ruger Precision Rifle, and this brass will be a part of that process!
You can learn more or order this brass by going to the Starline .243 Winchester Product Page.
308 Winchester
308 Winchester has to be one of the most popular rifle chamberings period! It’s used by the military for machine guns, by competitors in shooting competitions, and is also quite popular for big game hunting. There are hundreds of different popular .308 bullets that are optimal for .308 Winchester- a great reason to go with this chambering! I’ve even loaded pulled military tracer bullets in .308, something you won’t find in other less-standard bullet calibers. Now there’s another great option for .308 Winchester rifle brass: Starline!
Check out the Starline .308 Winchester Product Page for more details, and for pricing!
*Note: Starline has a lot of calibers available in their lineup of rifle brass. I covered a few here in this article, but if you want a complete list, click on the caliber drop down on the Starline Rifle Brass Page to see a complete list.
I’m excited to try out all of this brass- there’s going to be a lot of reloading and shooting, as well as some ballistics analysis. Sounds like fun to me! Look for more stories coming up featuring this new Starline bottleneck rifle brass in the coming months. I’ve got my work cut out for me!
Are you using this new brass from Starline? I’d love to hear your experiences!
Thanks,
Gavin
Gavin,
do you know whether or not the flash holes are drilled or punched?
or, more to the point, will the flash hole will need to be de-burred?
and how does the case mouth look?
thanks for the update!
Stretch
I found the brass to. Be very well produced. Primer pocket very uniform and minimal if any flash hole debuting needed. The 308 Seems to be more like 7.62 in weight and capacity. I like it very much.
Bought 500 count box of Starline 243 brass for my Ruger Precision project. Had to cull-out three pieces, two for cracks and one for an odd dent that may have a thin spot. Using an .082 drill bit, I reamed the flash holes and only removed a little material on maybe one in ten cases. The flash hole tool removed very little material in each case. The Sinclair carbide primer pocket tool showed a little more variance in pocket depth among the cases than I would have liked. After full length resizing I did a preliminary check of case neck wall thickness. About 25% had .0005 or less variance, 30% had .0005 to .001 variance, 30% had .001 to .0015 and the remaining 15% were .0015 to .002. I’ll add an additional post about the final results.