mixing 9mm brass

[porthos]

OK; just recieved 3000 brass from shumkles on this site. my intention was to seperate it into headstamps. what a pain in the ***. so, my question is: does mixing headstamps affect accuracy as it will in a rifle? i'm shooting a Sig 210; more accurate than i'm capeable of shooting. but was wondering about mixed brands of brass and different lengths of the brass?

[RedlegEd]

Hi. I'll wager to say that most people here would say not to worry about it. The question is...how accurate do you need your ammunition to be? Are you a precision (i.e. bullseye) or silhouette competition shooter where consistency really matters, or do you clang steel and shoot for fun? If the latter, I'd say it's not worth the effort to separate the HS of pistol brass. One other consideration is the relative thickness of different brass and the impact on swaging down your cast bullets. 9mm tends to be rather hard on cast bullets, and I suspect that some brass is a little less forgiving of cast lead than others. Me...? I do not separate my pistol brass by HS, or even by brass and nickel.
Ed

ETA: I've gotten a lot of brass from shumkles. He is a #1 Straight Shooter that provides a quality product exactly as he represents. I would recommend him to anyone on this site who needs brass.

[poppy42]

I can’t speak about using it in a rifle as I don’t have a 9mm rife. But I’ve shot thousands and thousands of 9 mm range brass. I’ve also converted thousands of pieces of range brass from 9 mm to 9 mm Makarov. I see no difference in accuracy. (Same hole accuracy). Considering the effective range of even a 9 mm rifle I seriously doubt you need to separate your brass by head stamp. I certainly don’t. Hope this helps.

[BNE]

I don’t separate mine. No issues so far. And my guns and my bullets are more accurate than I am.

[metricmonkeywrench]

I'm a sorter kind of guy, I only have a single stage press so generally I'm only loading 50-100 rounds for pistol and 20 maybe 40 for rifle at any one sitting. I also track the life of each lot and dispose of the lot when issues start to arise indicating that the brass has reached its usable "life".

Didn't pay close enough attention once and loaded an older box of .38 for some chrono work, the two split cases showed up big time in the data. The up side was that I had to reload an new batch and take the chrono back to the range with "younger" brass

[ACC]

OK; just recieved 3000 brass from shumkles on this site. my intention was to seperate it into headstamps. what a pain in the ***. so, my question is: does mixing headstamps affect accuracy as it will in a rifle? i'm shooting a Sig 210; more accurate than i'm capeable of shooting. but was wondering about mixed brands of brass and different lengths of the brass?

It doesn't matter as long as the loads are lite. I would not trust my life on mixed head stamp brass, but since most of my shooting is putting holes in targets that is ok.

I have found that 4.4 grains of AA #2 behind a lee 125 grain fprn will give me just a tad over 1000 fps, which is gentle to my S&W Model 59 and extremely accurate.

ACC

[reddog81]

Sometimes I sort it and sometimes I just run with whatever I picked up at the range. With 9mm I consider it necessary to view the headstamp and make sure nothing with a crimped primer pocket is in there, make sure no .380 brass is in the mix and make sure none of the oddball brands that have a self inside the case are present.

[flint45]

I never have and my two different nines shoot as good as I can. But I don’t shoot for extreme accuracy just minute of six inch metal gong target.

[tazman]

If you are loading for best accuracy then by all means sort the brass at least by headstamp. You have a pistol that is capable of great accuracy if you want to use it.
If you are going for good enough accuracy and lots of fun, don't worry about it. Even mixed brass will give you accuracy enough to hit the 10 ring an a silhouette target out to 12-15 yards very easily. I know that from experience.

[Winger Ed.]

I'll separate out 100 or so once in awhile to see how good I can be.

All the rest, I don't.
If it makes a BIG difference at handgun ranges, I can't shoot well enough to notice.

[dtknowles]

I am definitely a sorter. When I sold range brass is was always sorted. I used shotgun shell boxes that I picked up at the range. I dump the days range brass on the floor and sit down and sort it out into 11 different head stamps with the twelfth as the odd ball bucket. I would have two dozen shotgun shell boxes and sort the 40's and 9's at the same time with other calibers getting pushed to the side. Nickel plated brass is separated and sorted separately. Of course since I did all the separating all my ammo is head stamp consistent with different loads having different head stamps. My self defense ammo is nickel plated and no more than twice fired.

I also feel a bit differently about accuracy. A lot of my 9mm ammo is not fine tuned for accuracy. I think I can shoot better than any of my 9mms so no point in trying to guild the lily but odd ball brass will cause a flyer and if it swages your bullets could cause leading. None of them shoot as accurately as my Dan Wesson revolvers. I am not saying that a 9 is not built that is accurate, just none of mine are that kind of target guns. Remember three things lead to results on the target, shooter, gun and ammo. You need to balance all three.

Tim

[JimB..]

9mm brass has generally been so plentiful that I filter out the headstamps I don’t like which includes all the stuff with a step inside, but I don’t actually sort by headstamp.

[toallmy]

I separate all brass by head stamp , I load and shoot it all but it's kept in separate batches . I need all the help I can get staying on target , I am the problem when shooting

[Hutch556]

I do not separate brass for plinking ammo, and I have not seen any effects that would leave me to believe the accuracy is degraded from doing so. With that said, If working up and shooting a hot max charge, I will use all the same brass to eliminate any case capacity issues such as different length or thicknesses from using different brass.

[rfd]

i never ever separate 9mm brass by brand/manufacturer, and i get thousands of free cases from the 55 gal drums at the town police range. a multitude of brands, ready to be cleaned and run through the turret press with 4.2 grains of w231 under a 115 or 125 grain hi-tec. for me, it's just a pistol round, and at the short distances i practice and plink, the brass is a non-issue as long as the completed cartridge fires and cycles. i refer to the adage that a pistol is only needed to fight the way to getting a rifle :) which brings up my ruger pc carbine in 9mm. it gets mixed cases, too, and performs yeoman well at 100 yards. ;)

267081

[Lloyd Smale]

no way i have the time to waste or inclination to separate handgun brass. If my 9mm groups are .1 bigger so what. Only problem you might run into with once fired range brass is the good old glock bulge.

[Thunder Stick]

I'm currently reloading a bunch of 9X19 myself. I initially worked up a good load with RP brass to find one that was accurate in both my pistol and carbine. Then, I decided to weigh my different brands and typed of 9mm Luger brass. I had R-P, RP-UMC, FC and Win. The different brands that I had weighed within 2 grains of each other. I tossed them all together for cleaning, sizing and reloading.

My Ruger PC Carbine.

https://i.imgur.com/x4YbwSO.jpg

[Petrol & Powder]

I'm solidly in the camp of "Don't bother to sort it" when it comes to 9mm.

[evort]

I sort out the Winchester, Federal, and Blazer. I found that setting the powder drop to say Winchester brass is beneficial on my 550.

[dverna]

I load most pistol ammunition on a 1050. I have never sorted brass for any pistol caliber. I doubt 1% of us would see any difference in accuracy unless we were shooting from a rest. Most people are hard pressed to group 1.5" at 10 yards shooting two handed...but maybe I shoot with below average people.

But I use factory for SD. I might get a few more failures to feed with unsorted cases but they are so rare I do not worry about it. Certainly not worth the testing effort to prove it matters.

[Martin Luber]

Not if you are using standard 115 rn jkt, they rarely shoot well, same for factory Win Fed etc.

Now the Hornady/Zero 115 hp, that's an accurate bullet. Those get sorted brass. The other stuff is for plates and action

[Drm50]

To start with your gun needs to be capable of precision loaded ammo. A lot of these low end 9mm function well enough but aren’t target guns. I have a FN HP Comp. that is the only handgun I don’t load for. It won’t shot cast either. I might still sort them while watching TV or something, just for bullet seating purposes.

[MT Gianni]

I was shocked at the weight difference between 9mm brands so I sorted it. Now I only take one brand to the range at a time. I had a couple of gallons but it was winter and I did it while the tv was on. It only needs doing once.

[higgins]

I sort out the Federal and Blazer 9mm because it seems to have thinner walls, working better with the larger cast bullets I need for my gun with a .358 groove diameter. For jacketed bullets anything goes as long as the bullets seat and crimp properly; my loads are not max. so internal volume differences aren't a big deal.

[Burnt Fingers]

9mm brass has generally been so plentiful that I filter out the headstamps I don’t like which includes all the stuff with a step inside, but I don’t actually sort by headstamp.

I've got ~15 gallons of 9mm brass. I've found one piece with the step.

One thing I've been doing is using a magnet. There's some brass plated steel out there that will fool ya. It also gets those ShellShock cases out of the mix.

[Tokarev]

Usually I sort by brand and keep boxes of the final product separately. But realistically, it matters very little out of a handgun. I do it because I can, not because I really want to.

[Budzilla 19]

I sorted a five gallon bucket of 9mm, just because I had the time!! I love r-p brass so, on to the sorting we went!! Plinking stuff gets whatever