Been a while since I posted up.

I have had alot of success with my 22-250 recently but I have put a new stock on it and the previous load doesnt shoot all that well anymore. No problem, I went and got a box of nosler custom brass as from what Ive heard its good. Immediately I stubled upon 34gr of H4895 shooting 55gr vmax at avg velocity of 3530fps. Touching holes at 100. No probs.

But....

The nosler custom brass is trimmed down below 1.900. I usually trim it at 1.904 but none of the cases have stretched this much yet. To my dissapointment, the expensive nosler custom brass is cracking on the shoulders and necks. Plus the necks have a carbon residue on them. No pressure signs are evident- Im still 1.5gr under max charge and bullets are seated about 15 thou shy of the lands.

Is this due to the cases being too short and not sitting tight in the chamber? Can i stop it by annealing the cases? Or is there another fix for them? The gun seems to like this brass better than other brands and I want to keep using it but im not happy with all the cracks forming. From two loadings of the brass since new, Ive thrown out 4 cases. Never had that problem with any other cases.

annealing might help, and no the .004'' under length is not causing you cracks and splits. as for the carbon issue, when was the last time that you cleaned the chamber really well... most of us don't give the chamber much thought.
as far as the brass goes, nosler brass is made by federal and the big deal about it is that it is weight matched and prepped otherwise from a metalurgic standpoint i doubt if it's any different than any other brass. another thought on the carbon issue is that if your necks are getting hard they will allow fouling to flow back into the chamber as will a low pressure load. i'd try some different brass and keep after it.

The only other suggestion I could give other than big dans fine advice is increase your load some. Annealing is dirt simple, just stand your cases up in a shallow pan with a half inch of water and heat just the necks red and tip them over with a screwdriver (they are hot). Dry and load as usual. I anneal around every fifth firing.

"I have had alot of success with my 22-250 recently but I have put a new stock on it and the previous load doesnt shoot all that well anymore. No problem, I went and got a box of nosler custom brass as from what Ive heard its good."

Sounds like you are attempting to fix "new stock" bedding problems with new cases. Doubt that will work very well.

Ive changed from a hogue overmold stock to a custom walnut thumbhole. It shoots alot better, just I think the harmonics have changed and it likes the new load better. Took 3 foxes from 4 shots the first hunt out with the new stock.

Im going to try the winchester brass next.

You might want to try Hornady-Frontier brass there necks are well anneled I have had real good luck with all there brass.

We dont have it in australia yet mate. Nosler custom is the best on offer. apparently. Im going to get some winchester brass and try next.

I get blackened necks on my 25-06 brass too. The brass is fire-formed and neck sized using a Lee Collet Neck Die and provides a very good fit to the chamber in my Ruger #1. The load is a full case of Retumbo powder over 120 grain bullets, the powder is lightly compressed. I brought the blackened case neck issue up about a year ago and one suggestion was to try a little faster powder, I did, but still got blackened necks. Another suggestion was to try a bullet with a crimp groove and crimp it so as to facilitate a longer burn time in the case, I did, but still got blackened necks. Another suggestion was to try magnum primers to facilitate faster ignition, I did, but still got blackened necks. Another suggestion was to monkey around with seating depth, I did, but still got blackened necks. Eventually I quit fussing over it. I get very good accuracy with the load so I will put up with a little blackening around the case neck.

I wouldn't get too exercised about blackened necks. It the case body starts picking up streaks, then you have an inadequate pressure issue. You may find annealing the necks will reduce blackening just because the brass gets less springy and doesn't come back from expansion to chamber diameter quite so enthusiastically? The cracks suggest those necks were marginally annealed to start with. It is even possible to miss annealing accidentally. In either case, re-annealing can't hurt except that it may lower your start pressure slightly, making you increase the load slightly to compensate.

Another brass brand that comes with nearly perfect dimensions is Norma. They make 22-250. I don't know if you can get it either?

Yeah unclenick I can get it, not cheap but i can get it. Might look into it as winchester I will have to buy factory ammo to get the brass from. Will persist with the rest of the batch of nosler and see how long it lasts.

I have one 22-250 that was really picky on brass. I went to Remingtons nickle brass and all is good. They size easy and they never stick in the chamber.

Keep an eye on the condition of the nickel. If you get enough reloads out of it, it starts to flake off at the case mouth. I've had steel pistol dies scored by the nickel flakes. I think maybe it was MikeG who actually got a nickel chip embedded in a die, where it scratched every case going in. I don't recall how he got it out?.

That is the one reason I dont want to use the winchester supreme brass. I will see how the rest of this box of nosler brass goes, but im going to price some norma stuff. So it has similar dimensions to the nosler stuff eh? The one other person I know who uses it in aus, has made his into 6/250 brass and raves about the quality of it. Who knows, Ive loaded up some more today and will test it this week.

One thought. All neck annealing puts a color stain on brass, as you see in military cases where post-annealing polishing is forbidden to maximize corrosion immunity conferred by the oxide layer. Commercial brass has to look pretty, though, so they polish it. Nonetheless, the larger grain annealed brass has a just slightly whiter yellow color. If you hold most commercial rifle cases in the light just right, you can just make out the slight color difference to confirm the stuff was annealed? You can check that. Just keep in mind that there is a broad range of annealing temperature, and these may have gotten a dead minimum if it was properly done at all. As said earlier, it can't hurt to do it again. Hornady now makes a kit for doing it, but you don't have to have that.