Military reformed brass qustions

[charlie b]

Recent years I have run into military brass (5.56) that has obviously been reloaded by the arsenal. The head stamp has been wiped out (by stamping with dots) and then a new headstamp applied.

I used surplus brass a lot when I was younger and had less money. Never saw this kind of thing in those days.

That raises questions for me.
1. How is the case reformed? Is it simply head stamped and sized? Or is it 'reformed' in the regular production line? Do they resize the base/rim area as well? Annealed? Anyone know the details?

2. I assume this also means a mfg will receive a mixed lot of brass to reform. Which means if I get a bunch of LC brass that has been restamped, it may not actually be LC manufactured brass, maybe FC manufactured brass that LC has reformed. That means the case voumes will be all over the place.

3. How many firings will the government allow with their cases? How does that affect case life, especially with regards to head separation? I assume (very dangerous ) that any neck annealing will 'fix' and problems with early neck splitting.

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[Outpost75]

The markings are the Octal code system used to identify which of the 24 stations on the loading machine the cartridge was produced.

Attachment 245383Attachment 245384

[charlie b]

Sorry, those are not the dots I mean. I have notice them, and the ones with larger diameter dots.

These are a case where a head stamp is made over the top of those dots.

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[cwtebay]

Sorry, those are not the dots I mean. I have notice them, and the ones with larger diameter dots.

These are a case where a head stamp is made over the top of those dots.

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Do you have photos of the stamping?

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[lefty o]

would like to see an example. my thoughts are its a small reloading business doing it, as neither LC or Federal reload.

[charlie b]

Next time I get some will take a pic. The ones I noticed last were FC stamped.

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[barkerwc4362]

The US military does not reload any brass. Period! All fired brass is turned in for salvage and sold as scrap at auction. Who told you that the US Military re-used their fired brass? Who ever did is telling a lie. I have gone through the pain and agony to recover the small arms brass to meet the required percentage of material necessary to clear an ammunition draw in the US Army. The brass is usually sold by 55 gallon drum loads at Defense Resources Management Office (DRMO) auctions. It is not returned to Lake City or any other Military facility for re-use.

Bill

[skeettx]

Yes, and often a certificate of destruction is required from the buyer at the auctions

[Walks]

My DAD told me that during U.S. NAVY Recruit Training in WWII, that they reloaded .30-06 for the 1903's used in Marksmanship
training.

[tankgunner59]

Walks I was looking at a thread on the international ammunition associations forum with this discussion. It turns out that the US military did reload 30-06 for training purposes during 1920's and 1930's. It was done at the Frankford Arsenal. According to the thread over there, and they had documentation, there were some crates handled by a members father in the USMC in the WW2 pacific. Some was reloaded and the rest was leftovers of broken lots and lots with damaged packaging. According to the OP in that thread and the doc's, because the lot numbers could not be verified they were not supposed to be used for combat. However, his father said he had handled several crates marked, "RELOADED-NOT FOR USE IN COMBAT". It aas assumed the ammo was shipped to the pacific because the Marines were in such a shortage of all supplies in the early part of the war including ammo. The Marines were still using M1903's in the early months of the war.
I went back and tried to find the post but I couldn't. The OP was sigman2 and the post was from May of 2010.

[tankgunner59]

Here is the thread I spoke of in the above post. Hope it helps you out.
tg59

https://forum.cartridgecollectors.or...0-m2-ball/7667

Especially read the 13th post in this thread.