General Question on Brass Stock/Life

[ejcrist]

I just turned 50 the other day, and probably like a lot of people crossing that threshold I've been thinking about the things I want to do for the remainder of this party. At or near the top of the list is to do an awful lot of shooting and hunting. Most of the shooting I want to do is handgun silhouette, approximately once a month or more if time permits. One of the biggest fears I've always had is having a certain caliber firearm that I like to shoot a lot and finding out the brass manufacturers discontinued making brass for it when you need more, and not being able to form brass from another available case.
I recently put an order in for a Freedom Arms 327 mag with the 32 H&R and 32-20 cylinder. I've never owned a 32-20 but have wanted one for many years. I also pre-ordered 2,000 cases of 327 from Starline and I've accumulated over 2,000 for the H&R over the years so I'm figuring those will last me probably the rest of my shooting days. I've been watching the Starline website for 32-20 availability and I plan to order about 2,000 of those cases too when available since they're pretty darned scarce from what I can tell. I have no idea what the life of the brass is in these calibers but I know I've loaded some of the H&R cases over 10x and they still seem to be going strong. I'm assuming the 327 will be similar since it's also a straight-walled case. The 32-20 is the wildcard though. Being a slight bottle-necked case from which I've read has thin walls, I don't have any idea how long this brass will last with medium loads. If anyone has any thoughts/experience on the matter I'd certainly love to hear them. I'm pretty sure I'm going to like shooting the 32-20 and assuming I do, I'd want to have enough brass to last a long while since you never know if it'll be in production over the long haul.

[paul h]

I've had .357 and 480 brass that I've loaded dozens of times and they are still in use. The keys to long brass life are using the least amount of flare to seat a bullet w/o shaving lead and the minimum amount of crimp to keep the bullet in place and don't redline your loads. I find with pistol brass it's the work hardening of the case mouth from flairing and crimping that leads to them splitting.

[John Allen]

I've had .357 and 480 brass that I've loaded dozens of times and they are still in use. The keys to long brass life are using the least amount of flare to seat a bullet w/o shaving lead and the minimum amount of crimp to keep the bullet in place and don't redline your loads. I find with pistol brass it's the work hardening of the case mouth from flairing and crimping that leads to them splitting.

Paul, I agree totally with this statement. I have some 44mag cases that have at least 15 loads on them and they are still going great. I run slow loads on the bottom of the scale and also barely flair.

[ejcrist]

Paul, I agree totally with this statement. I have some 44mag cases that have at least 15 loads on them and they are still going great. I run slow loads on the bottom of the scale and also barely flair.

Thanks gentlemen - good advice. I also flare the minimum but I didn't think about the crimp. I don't think I use maximum loads in anything either. Some are on the high end but nothing too close to the red line.

Gene

[John Allen]

Gene, I also use a taper crimp for my pistol loads but go light.

[williamwaco]

I have a batch of .38 Specials I bought around 1970.
They have been loaded at least once a year since that time.
There are still around 450 in service.

I agree with the expanding and crimping comments.

See

http://reloadingtips.com/how_to/crimping_revolvers.htm

to see how I do it.

That said -

A couple of years ago I bought some S&B .38 Special factory wad cutters for accuracy testing and to get a batch of matched cases for more testing.
After six loadings, over one third have split.

I think it is safe to say "They don't make them like they used to!"

[Green Frog]

Oddly enough, I lost an inordinately high number of new Starline 327 FM cases when I tried to load them the first time. They apparently have thick necks/small ID at neck, so when I tried to expand them to take a bullet, they got stuck on and pulled the rim right out of the shell holder. I now lube each neck with a little graphite or a VERY little Imperial Sizing Die Wax™ to try and prevent this.

Loading 32 S&W Long and 32 H&R I didn't experience this, and I haven't loaded enough 32-20s to really make a valid comment one way or the other.

Froggie

[GabbyM]

New brass cases need to be tumbled in corn cob or walnut media before any sizing. Otherwise you often end up with galled dies or like you experienced, sticking. Has something to do with how they wash them at the end of process.

[Jeff82]

I've found that case life varies dramatically with the specific cartridge. My 45-70s need frequent trimmings and fail much more rapidly than my 357 or 38 special cases. For 357s I start to see failures after about a dozen reloads, and I would guess that the average case life (50% of cases remaining) is somewhere around twenty reloads or maybe a little higher. Since they almost always fail at the case mouth, I'll often trim them down and put them in service as 38-special cases. It seems to me that cases that need frequent trimming almost always have shorter lives. 357 and 38 special cases almost never need trimming, which should say something about how well they hold up to the stress of being fired.

And as others have said, I totally agree with Paul H's comments.

[44man]

Nobody beats me, still shooting .44 brass fired over 40X. Call me the cheapest and oldest SOB ever.
Brass is funny and if you use it, it lasts but if you store it, seems to get brittle.