Brass Life

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ilikeoldguns

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I'm wondering; with my own brass; I police it up; bag it and tag the bag with the make and number of times it's been fired. But I'm hazy on when I know I can't reload it anymore? I understand Seven times to be the limit in most cases and you should stop if the brass crack or bulges. But my copy of The Handloader's Guide says that some cases can just be trimmed past the crack and re-used; like trimming down cracked .357 to .38 special.

And what about found and given brass? I'm mainly reloading at the moment to save money, but I don't mix this stuff in and so far I collect more than I reload *or* shoot; some just for curiosity sake. What other physical cues are there to the given usefulness of brass? I never use stuff which has been exposed to undue heat such as from a fire or which appears overly rusted, but i wonder; I don't know where it's been and not all primers even differ in colour to give me a clue as to if I'm picking up someone else's reloads. I'd like to use it; can I just reload found/gifted brass till it has a visual sign of failure, or presume it's been fired at least twice if I have reason to and reload it fewer times?

Thanks for your time
 
A few general comments .........
# of reloads can depend on the firearm (Enfields can be hard on brass) or whether collet neck size or full length resize (works the brass more). Can also depend on how hot you load them ....... modest loads will prolong brass life, top end hot loads will stress the brass sooner.
 
As said it depends on the gun it's being fired in, quality of the brass, type of round and how much pressure is in it etc.

i took my lee loader to the range and reloaded a 357mag case 18 times before a very small crack started at the top of the case. i used 15.5gr of h110 with a 158gr bullet. I've also loaded 45acp 30+ times with no issues, but that's a very low pressure round.
 
Case life depends on brass quality, chamber pressure, the chamber diameter and headspace length, how much your dies work the brass and how much shoulder setback or shoulder bump when sizing. The .308 cases below were fired in a brand new Savage rifle and full length resized until they failed.


308fail-1_zps30d387ab.jpg


308fail2-1_zps3ca31f6b.jpg


The best way to get the most from your cases is measure the case after it is fired and only bump the shoulder back .001 to .002.

headspacegauge004_zps4465b7bc.jpg
 
ilikeoldguns said:
... I'm hazy on when I know I can't reload it anymore? I understand Seven times to be the limit in most cases and you should stop if the brass crack or bulges.
Click to expand...

Forget any arbitrary numbers. Shoot them until they fail. Once you can see daylight through them they are junk. If there is no daylight they are good to go, unless you can see some obvious indication that transmission of daylight is imminent.

Cracks that are so small and conveniently located that they can be trimmed away are exceedingly rare, and I don't think I've ever seen one. But, if you can trim it away, no reason you couldn't proceed to load the case.
 
As has been said, number of useful reload times is arbitrary especially in rifle cases, dependent on numerous factors. Most influential is pressure and amount of working imposed on the brass: Brass quality and malleability are important factors as well. Not to suggest that separation will never happen, but I've only had to toss handgun brass on account of neck splitting and loosened primer pockets. Because all handgun necks are worked about four times per conventional reload (reduced, then dragged over expander ball in the resize die, flared in the flare die, then crimped in the bullet seating die) it stands to reason that case head separation won't have a chance to happen much before the neck splits and the case passes over to the bucket of glory.
 
Got 6 reloads of medium hot 9mm out a bunch of range brass that I bought off the EE. Last time 1 in 100 cases were cracking so I decided to fire them off and leave them behind. Of course not a single FTE or anything.
Just loaded some more Federal .44mag with a nice range load for the 11th time last night. A handful have cracked along the way but until there's more of them, bang, wash, load, repeat.

For what it's worth, I crush my discard cases with big pliers so they can't get used and some of them have been so brittle they almost shattered instead of crushing. Those ones were very done.
 
bigedp51 said:
Case life depends on brass quality, chamber pressure, the chamber diameter and headspace length, how much your dies work the brass and how much shoulder setback or shoulder bump when sizing. The .308 cases below were fired in a brand new Savage rifle and full length resized until they failed.


308fail-1_zps30d387ab.jpg


308fail2-1_zps3ca31f6b.jpg


The best way to get the most from your cases is measure the case after it is fired and only bump the shoulder back .001 to .002.

headspacegauge004_zps4465b7bc.jpg
Click to expand...

Go Norma! I use Lapua, but that table makes a good case for Norma.
 
In a 270 win that I was doing some experimenting with, I developed loads that were putting a 150 gr bullet out the tube at about 3030-3050 fps. The cases I used were virgin brass. I used a very light coat of lithium grease as a lubricant and didn't do anything to remove it after sizing. What I found after 10 reloads is that the cases stood up better, and hadn't grown to a length of requiring trimming yet. One piece of brass had a loose primer pocket, but that one was marked and suspect from the beginning as a loose primer pocket as compared to the rest. Also, without tumbling or other cleaning other than a wipe with a dry paper towel, the brass looked almost new. I lightly annealed the case necks after shot 5. The bent paperclip trick shows no sign of an internal separation grove...

For reference, the cases were full length sized after each shot as my collet neck die had failed. I also crimped the necks with a lee crimp die more most of the loads...
 
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