Brass from surplus?

just have to check see if its boxer primed and make sure its not steel.
but at under 20 bucks for 50 new winchester or remington brass... unless your just making plinking rounds and dont care!
 
The first rule of reloading is to understand every military surplus case as a 50/50 risk of being unreloadable.

Berdan primers have two flashholes (visible like little eyes inside the case). Boxer primers have one flashhole, and look like commercial brass. Berdan primers are damn near impossible to find, never mind digging out of the pocket and safely seating new ones. Some military boxer primers are hard to "decap". If there are three little crimps holding the primer in place, you need a cutter to get the primer out. Save your energy unless you run out of options.

So, look at a selection of cases from your stash. If you see two little flashholes inside on the bottom, you're out of luck. If the primers are crimped in, ditto. I sold a paint pail of Brazillean and Portuguese brass to the metal recycling dealer.
 
It's not that hard to decap crimped primers. A Lee universal decapper does the trick. You do still have to ream the primer pocket before re-priming.
 
Aside from the possibility of berdan primers, milsurp brass is a bit thicker than commercial, so you have to reduce the load by 10%. Not a big deal though. Mind you, I'd think twice about loading Korean or Malaysian. It might, I say again, might have been corrosively primed and have a bit shorter case life as result. Again, if it's boxer primed, it's not a big deal.
 
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