Are Winchester SS 9mm 'brass' reloadable?

grimblyd

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Hi Folks. I shoot at an outdoor range and when I pick up my 9mm brass, I quite often end up with other folks leavings. One of them is often Winchester 9mm brass, that looks to be stainless steel? Or at least the color of.
Can this brass be reloaded, or is that why they leave them littering about the range, because you can't reload them?

Thanks in advance!

Dan
 
Had no issues with nickle but prefer to stick with brass

I found they get brittle much faster when loaded hot. This is especilly true when reloading for rifle. I keep all my nickle rifle cases for hunting only. Thye don't get near the usage my general range plinking brass will and makes them easily distinguishable should they inadvertently get mixed together.

9mm may not be so bad but reload hot .357 loads in nickle casings and you will find you only get 4-5 reloads out of them before you see splits / cracks.
 
Try a couple first and feel for the primers being an overly tight fit. If you get that it indicates that the primer pockets were crimped by the factory. In that case there's simply too much other good brass to be picked up for free to fuss around with it. Toss it and move on. But if you can spit out and press in the primers on par with how easily it works with regular brass then use them.

Some brands of regular finish brass are also crimped. Again I don't bother with them. Federal Non-Tox is one such that I toss. It's a lot of added time and fuss to visually sort the brass this way but it ends up being about the same as dealing with the stoppages and interruptions at the press when you run into issues with the crimped stuff or when the primers bust off the ends and leave the inner collar still in place.

I also found that the crimped pocket cases have a higher incidence of broken primers during decapping and a higher incidence of just plain crushed primers during seating.

You'll find that the nickel has more friction during priming operations and during sizing. This is due to the slight extra thickness given by the nickel plating as well as nickel itself having a slightly higher coefficient of friction with the primers and die metals. But it's not a lot NORMALLY. So if you run into a crimped pocket you'll know it.
 
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