Brass life is really dependent on minimum chamber dimensions and tight head space.
I had an HBR rifle built by Nobby Uno in 308 Win. It had minimum chamber specs and very tight head space. I did have to turn the necks so that I could chamber the cartridges.
The pressures in bench rest rifles are usually very high, often 10-15% higher than the manuals recommend. The cartridge cases are neck re sized only on Wilson dies and an arbor press. I put around 800 rounds through that rifle before I sold it. I bought a bag of 50 Norma brass and went through the sorting process until I had 30 pieces of acceptable weights. I turned the necks on those pieces and screwed up a couple more. In the end, I had 27 pieces of brass. Without doing anything to the brass, I fired 800+ bullets out of them and gave them to the buyer of the rifle. They were still fine. That's around 30 reloads each. I did cycle them.
The fellow that got me into the BR game, showed me a 30BR that he had 25 cases made up for. He had well over 2000 bullets fired out of those cases and only lost 2 because of expanded primer pockets.
Off the shelf rifles, tend to have generous chambers and in spec head space. That is a hand loader's worst enemy as far as case longevity goes, especially when full length resizing. Another case killer is loading for several different rifles and running the cartridges through them indiscriminately. Just to many stresses.
I had an HBR rifle built by Nobby Uno in 308 Win. It had minimum chamber specs and very tight head space. I did have to turn the necks so that I could chamber the cartridges.
The pressures in bench rest rifles are usually very high, often 10-15% higher than the manuals recommend. The cartridge cases are neck re sized only on Wilson dies and an arbor press. I put around 800 rounds through that rifle before I sold it. I bought a bag of 50 Norma brass and went through the sorting process until I had 30 pieces of acceptable weights. I turned the necks on those pieces and screwed up a couple more. In the end, I had 27 pieces of brass. Without doing anything to the brass, I fired 800+ bullets out of them and gave them to the buyer of the rifle. They were still fine. That's around 30 reloads each. I did cycle them.
The fellow that got me into the BR game, showed me a 30BR that he had 25 cases made up for. He had well over 2000 bullets fired out of those cases and only lost 2 because of expanded primer pockets.
Off the shelf rifles, tend to have generous chambers and in spec head space. That is a hand loader's worst enemy as far as case longevity goes, especially when full length resizing. Another case killer is loading for several different rifles and running the cartridges through them indiscriminately. Just to many stresses.
