Brass Rotation

[ncbearman]

Sorry mods. probably the wrong thread.


So far I'm a .45 ACP and 9mm reloader. How critical/necessary is it to seperate once shot, twice shot etc.? I load with a single stage RC and do about 200 to 300 at a time. I have made a habit of careful attention to detail as when I start loading for my Dad's old M1 Garand I won't blow myself up.

Then the next question is when does it become critical/necessary to rotate brass.

Thanks in advance many times over gentlemen.

[Dan Cash]

Shoot them till they crack. You will probably loose them before they wear out. Sorting by number of firings; fergedaboudit.

[ncbearman]

Same with high power rifle loads?

[ph4570]

I rotate mine. Very easy to do so why not. I have containers of N fired and N+1 fired.

[Cherokee]

I keep brass by number of times fired. If I start getting failed cases, I can toss the whole lot - why risk a problem. Also, after a number of loadings (depends on cartridge), I relagate the cases to less than high end loads. Been doing this for 50 years. YMMV

[Old Caster]

I would never toss a whole batch of pistol brass just because one split. I only toss them if they themselves are split. I have boxes of fired and clean. I take out of the clean box until it is empty and then clean all the dirty brass at one time and put them in the clean box and start over. -- Bill --

[Dan Cash]

Same with high power rifle loads?

I watch the condition of my rifle brass to cull suspect cases but do not sort cases by firing count. If you use good dies and don't over do the resizing, brass lasts a very long time. Slopy chambers as are found in SMLE rifles are a case in point. With such a chamber, maximum loads combined with full length sizing equals only three or four loadings. Returning such brass to the chamber in which it was fired and doing a minimal neck sizing will extend the life of that brass to ten or more loadings.

[MBTcustom]

I cull rifle brass out when a batch starts getting splits, and I keep them separated by how many times they have been fired, but with the 45acp, I get so many reloads that it just doesn't make sense to cull them out. I have been working on the same batch of 1000 since I started reloading. Some have cracked, but some have been cycled over a dozen times with no ill effect. (I say a dozen as a conservative rough guess. If I found out that some had been cycled over 25 times, I wouldn't be surprised in the least) I have no experience with 9mm but I would guess that it doesn't last as long as 45acp. None the less, I would still run it till it splits and scrounge all i could in the meantime.

[wrench]

I have four kinds of pistol brass. Scrap brass-this has split, or other end of life issues.
Clean brass-tumbled and ready to load.
Dirty brass-range pick ups, maybe once fired, maybe many times fired.
Loaded brass-ready to make into dirty brass:-)
I used to keep brass separate, once fired, twice, etc. Too much work, didn't see any benefit.
I do keep rifle brass together as a batch, I've reloaded some batches 10x, and have yet to scrap more than one or two cased from a batch. I'm only loading light cast loads, though, so I get loooonnng case life.

[10mmShooter]

I absolutely sort my .308 brass my headstamp and times fired for my M1a...no more than 5 firings and brass is scrapped, an auto loading rifle is not kind to brass.

Pistol brass on the other hand...I have .38 special brass that is older than I am and, my 44 and 10mm brass will work harden at the case the mouths and will finely split when I either bell the case or seat the bullet.

I discard it then.

I only shoot my cast lead bullets from my pistol brass... so pressures are low, as I said the mouths will work harden and split. I have some 10mm brass that has been fired so many times you can barely read Winchester 10mm on the headstamp.

[bobthenailer]

I sort my brass by brand , and use a spefiec load for each brand of brass in that caliber & load it until i get some defect in a piece of brass & discard only that piece of brass but as i usually only use light to med velocity loads for 99% of my shooting , if i were useing max loads all the time i would inspect all the brass in that lot after finding a defect even in one case and reuse accordling
In handguns you will usually get case splits , but in some ,ive been useing the same brass for 30 years but i also have alot of brass to work with , my usual is 250 to 1000 cases or more with one load .

[Ziptar]

I don't keep track or sort for number of times fired for straight walled pistol brass.

I shoot them till they split or I loose them.

[paul h]

I don't keep track or sort for number of times fired for straight walled pistol brass.

I shoot them till they split or I loose them.

Same here, I don't even sort by headstamp. This is for bulk 38sp, 9mm, 45 acp and 5.56. I've shot enough 5 shot 1" groups at 100 with the 223 using range pickup brass and bulk varmint bullets to concede that for many uses brass is the least important part of the equation.

When I work up precision loads, I sort by headstamp but do not keep track of how many times brass is fired. I simply discard when split.

[popper]

40SW - shoot til I lose them. I inspect rifle brass carefully, but don't count # of reloads on anything.

[zomby woof]

I have a 1911 with a Kart NM barrel. I have nothing but problems shooting range pick up brass through it. I would buy Winchester brass by the 500 lot and shoot the same load through it. I run the lot and start over loading the 500. it worked out very well. All my other pistol brass does not get such treatment.
Since I got addicted to cast rifle shooting, I have a lot of about 1000 30.06 cases for one rifle. They will get into a rotation.

[RoGrrr]

Discard ?
Remember this - Duct tape fixed EVERYTHING

[1874Sharps]

For all but the most exacting match loads I do not think you will notice any degradation of accuracy by not sorting/rotating your pistol brass. Rifles are a horse of a different color. You may notice a difference between old and new brass if shooting a highly accurate rifle, especially if we are talking mixed headstamps and brands. I used to sort brass and keep track of the number of times a given group of rifle brass was fired, but for general plinking and blasting ammo I do not. When doing a load work up or when trying to wring out the last drop of accuracy from a rifle and load then I do go to the trouble of sorting and such. The brass will tell you when it is getting to the end of its service life. Seeing signs such as split necks, a light ring near the head (indicative of an impending head separation), etc. says it is time to throw that brass into the recycle bin.

[FISH4BUGS]

I shoot sub machine guns which all have notoriously loose chambers. The MACs are the worst. Bulged cases galore.
I keep my pistol caliber brass by the number of times fired. The first 5 gallon bucket (or 3 gallon bucket) is for once fired when I buy them. I reload and shoot that bunch, sometimes upward of 10,000 rounds in the case of 9mm. I put all of them into another bucket and mark it 2X. I will go through all the 1X fired, pick them up, mark the bucket 2X and put them into that, then start over and make the next bucket 3X.
The loose chambers really work the brass. Resizing is really done four times, - the first is the normal resizer/decapper die, the second is to slightly bell the mouth of the case, the third is to crimp the case with the normal crimp die, the last is the Lee factory Crimp Die.
If any pistol caliber brass splits, I scrap it. Otherwise, just pay attention to your brass and it should last a long time as long as you don't shoot max loads all the time. Mine are loaded just high enough to reliably cycle the gun.
Rifle calibers are another story. Machine guns are very hard on brass. I use military surplus brass in the rifle caliber machine guns, and most of them are once fired when I start. They were probably fired in machine guns anyway, so they need some reworking.
Be far more careful with the rifle calibers. No question - split necks are scrapped immediately.
Just inspect your brass carefully when reloading rifle calibers.

[MikeS]

I have some 45ACP brass that's been shot so much that the headstamp is totally gone! those cases load and shoot the same as any others, so I keep using them. I have some military brass that's from the 60's and it still works as well as any other brass. I don't know if it's really needed or not, but I like to get my brass really clean, I first put the brass in an ultrasonic cleaner, then I let it dry, then I resize, then I tumble in a vibratory tumbler with a mixture of walnut shells, and plastic blasting media. When I get done the brass looks like it's brand new!

I also reload both steel cases, and aluminum (Blazer) cases, and while CCI says the Blazer cases aren't reloadable I have no problem reloading them 4 - 5 times before the neck splits during resizing (actually during neck expansion). While the original Blazer aluminum cases used a non-standard berdan primer, the newer stuff uses a regular boxer primed small pistol primer. While I could be wrong, I figure that if it really was dangerous to reload the Blazer aluminum cases they would still go out of their way to make sure it couldn't be reloaded, rather than using a standard size primer that's not even crimped in place!