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Thread: Check your brass warning!!!

  1. #21
    Boolit Grand Master

    dragon813gt's Avatar
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    Check your brass warning!!!

    Quote Originally Posted by RED BEAR View Post
    when shooting a few weeks ago i was picking up my brass and asked the guy on the range at the same time what caliber he was shooting didn't want to take his . he told me i was welcome to them with kind of a chuckle or so it seemed. after inspecting his they were 9mm and everyone was split all the way down the case. when i mentioned that he was splitting every case i was told in no uncertain terms he knew and it was ok. i just kept my mouth shut ad moved down range.
    Probably shooting 9mm major loads. The guys that compete know how many loadings they can get before the case splits. If he wasn’t shooting an open gun I would have moved away from him to be on the safe side.

    As far as lubing straight wall cases goes. If you don’t have carbide dies you need to lube them. And while you don’t need to w/ carbide dies, it reduces resistance a lot. I don’t bother when loading on a LCT. But when I’m using a 550 I lube the cases. Things work a lot better this way.

  2. #22
    Boolit Grand Master tazman's Avatar
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    I reload on a Lee Classic Cast turret, which means I do one case at a time. When I resize a case, it is easy to tell if one is cracked or a 380. The pressure on the handle is almost nonexistent with a cracked case as opposed to a normal one. Same for the 380 case.
    I can see where there would be a problem on a progressive as far as being able to tell prom the feel. You are doing many jobs on the case at once so the difference would not be as apparent.

  3. #23
    Boolit Buddy
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    Each case gets rolled under the light so I can look for imperfections. When I am expanding the neck, "brittle" brass shows its weakness and gets tossed. Nickel cases go brittle sooner in my experience. Even though I track reloads, I've never had to count because neck splits and sizing/expanding force tells me the story before I waste time and primers on dangerous old cases.

  4. #24
    Boolit Master


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    The sound is a dead giveaway for cracked pistol brass. I can hear a cracked case while tumbling in the media separator and it's even easier to find by dropping a few at a time on a wooden table top. I shoot .40 in USPSA and shoot 'em until they split. Nothing bad happens when they split at pistol pressures and they usually split in the below the case mouth but I seldom see a .40 case split at the mouth. OTOH, .357 seems to always split at the mouth.
    Sometimes life taps you on the shoulder and reminds you it's a one way street. Jim Morris

  5. #25
    Boolit Man
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    Have 45 acp brass that load 200 grain cast SWC's to major power factor and 38 special cases load 140 grain wad cutters with easily 50 or more load cycles on them. Will usually have to retire a case or two every large batch that run. Never run 45 unless loading 5,000 to 10,000 cases to replenish the range ammo. My match brass for using in a crowd is matched low load count good stuff. Still not uncommon for me to find WW2, Korea and Vietnam Era head stamps in my mixed range brass.

    On the flip side my high pressure rifle brass is all either retired after 5th load cycle if didn't fail Q.C. before. If has been loaded five times and wife passes it a last time it's loaded, boxed and put in long term storage "zombie" lockers for when the Mad Max days occur and need that one last round or use at ranges have to abandon your brass and can't police up your life blood. I can see some club member on brass policing duty picking up my cases to put in the "once fired" barrels for selling or club use. Wife worked a decade in dental lab and has been a Registered Dental Hygienist for 25 years and all the high pressure rifle cases, especially magnum and wildcats, she uses dental picks to feel for first signs of stress cracks at junction of case head and walls so don't have case head separations. If has any she is unsure on pass/fail then the "maybe" bucket all get examined with a bore scope. Brass can be run for decades in some applications and three pops then call it done in others. Don't play games with 7mm Practical or 338 Lapua.
    For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions. 2 Timothy 4:3

  6. #26
    Boolit Buddy

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    I pick up 380 and 9mm together regularly. The 380 have a very different feel when depriming. If you're awake at all, you'll notice. No need to sort otherwise.
    As for pistol brass...use it til you lose it (or the primers get loose or cracks develop).

  7. #27
    Boolit Master

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    Here's one to watch out for; wonder what happened here?

    Click image for larger version. 

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  8. #28
    Boolit Master



    Dieselhorses's Avatar
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    WT...?
    Quote Originally Posted by fatelk View Post
    Here's one to watch out for; wonder what happened here?

    Click image for larger version. 

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    Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G870A using Tapatalk
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  9. #29
    Boolit Grand Master In Remembrance
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    fatek - Dang! Uh I think I'd retire that round as that primer appears to be "somewhat flattened" LOL! (And the case a smidge bulged, looks like?) Guessing a double charge...

  10. #30
    Boolit Master

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    I found it on the ground at the range; glad I didn't pull the trigger on that one.

    It's extremely bulged. To be honest, I wonder if it wasn't fired in a 9mm. That's just a theory and I could well be wrong, but the bulge looks more like the bulge of something fired in an oversized chamber, instead of bulging back into the feed ramp area. From the primer dent it looks like a Glock. My theory is that a Glock extractor will hold the rim enough to fire, but headspace would of course be terrible and the primer would back out badly on ignition. The pressure would then force the case back and seriously flatten the primer that was mostly out of the case. That's just my wild speculation, either that or a gross overcharge/doublecharge. I'm not going to shoot any .380s in a Glock 9mm to experiment.

    Either way, it went straight into the scrap bucket. One time I found a pile of 9mm brass, and several were missing primers. That whole pile went into the scrap bucket. Someone likes to load them hot.

  11. #31
    Boolit Grand Master In Remembrance
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    True, a number of people think that's OK. I sure don't! Just because you're an idiot, like they are, doesn't mean that metal never corrodes or fatigues or fails if you abuse it enough. -shudder-

  12. #32
    Boolit Master


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    The way folks treat their brass since the coming of Progressive Reloading presses has drastically altered reloading. I can't even use the term HandLoading.


    Ammo is shot up as fast possible, and loaded just as fast. In the three most common auto-loading pistol cartridges, case inspection is cursory at best. They are dumped in a bucket or an ammo can. Brought home, dumped in a sorter, then cleaned in some fashion.
    Straight into the progressive, and BANG, BANG, BANG, reloaded.
    Then dumped back loose into the ammo can, and BANG, BANG, BANG, shot empty at the range. One thousand, two thousand, three thousand at a time.
    Some people don't even bother to reload unless they have 5,000 to 10,000 empty cases. The only time a case is thrown away is if it splits all the way down while in the press.
    I used to load with & for a friend that would burn up 500 rds of 5.56 ammo in an hour. I would take 500 once-fired G. I. cases, tumble them, then inspect each case before I lubed them, SB sized & decap them. Then they were trimmed to minimum length, chamfered & deburred. Then ream & clean the primer pockets. I would then put them through a Sonic Cleaner.
    I'd hand prime each one. Then they went through the progressive for powder, bullet and TAPER CRIMP. Each one was then checked for overall length and dropped into a loaded cartridge gauge.
    I was fortunate that he only took out 500rds at a time so I was able to keep track of how many times they were reloaded & fired. Told him 3 loadings were the limit. Then they would have to be annealed, and did he want to buy a case annealing machine.

    Well unfortunately he passed away before we got to that point.

    But in the 20plus years I shot COWBOY ACTION, I saw many a split case and many a Revolver tie up because of a incorrectly seated primer. And Rifle & Shotgun jams because the Ammo wouldn't fit the chamber. The vast majority of Cowboy Shooter's aren't much better.

    And until case/cartridge checkers came into existence it was a lot worse.

    People have absolutely no respect/careers for their brass.

    I was taught literally at my FATHER'S Knee that the CARTRIDGE case is the most important component of a HANDLOAD.

    UNFORTUNATELY most people today are reloaders.

    A WORLD of difference between them and a HANDLOADER.
    I HATE auto-correct

    Happiness is a Warm GUN & more ammo to shoot in it.

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  13. #33
    Boolit Master
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    Watch out for some Magtech brass............has a partition halfway down the inside.

    Winelover

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Abbreviations used in Reloading

BP Bronze Point IMR Improved Military Rifle PTD Pointed
BR Bench Rest M Magnum RN Round Nose
BT Boat Tail PL Power-Lokt SP Soft Point
C Compressed Charge PR Primer SPCL Soft Point "Core-Lokt"
HP Hollow Point PSPCL Pointed Soft Point "Core Lokt" C.O.L. Cartridge Overall Length
PSP Pointed Soft Point Spz Spitzer Point SBT Spitzer Boat Tail
LRN Lead Round Nose LWC Lead Wad Cutter LSWC Lead Semi Wad Cutter
GC Gas Check