culling brass

S

Shadow9mm

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So, for the first time I am having to cull brass in 9mm. So far just a few with odd head stamps SVT, and CBC.

SVT sticks in my dies. Does not have dots. But it has jammed my press up several times, out of the 4000 or so casings I have I have only found about 50 or so.

CBC wont hold bullets and gets wrecked by the case mouth expander. When using the expander the bullet will fall half way into the casing. like the brass wont spring back. When seating and crimping, it sometimes pulls the bullet back out. The bullet are loose and spin and pull free easily with fingers. So far have found about 15, but I need to go back through and sort again as I was not looking for them last time around.

CBC seems to have a CBC and a -CBC- stamp depending on the brass. The brass I was having issues with has the dashes on either side. Wondering if its the same a the dots on federal cases....

Who else has had to cull your brass, what head stamps have you had issues with?
 
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Friend of mine buys all his 9, 38, & 40 ammo in bulk & it's usually Magtech brand. He gives me all his brass which I reload (no dash).

I prefer it as it cleans up nice & works great in my Dillon 550. I also load a lot of Magtech 380 brass with same great results.

Is it possible your dies need adjusting (more crimp)? Maybe your flaring your case mouth too wide causing part of the problem?

I have so many of my favorites in Win, Federal, CBC, R-P brass that I usually set all the others aside & trade them of something I need. Years ago I ran a random mix of stamps (brass only) through my 550 with very few problems.

Stay Tuned - I'm sure other TFL members with far more experience than I will help you figure out your problems.
 
While a slow process, am always culling brass, then striving not to mix them up (impossible on some ranges). At least into groups of brass i know will be somewhat consistent. As times move on, we find a greater variety of brass on the ground, or from store bought. Some things that cause problems are brass thickness/elasticity and oal of the brass. 9mm seems to have more manufacturers than other calibers

Then there are differing handloading procedures/tools that can deal with "problem childs", but might only be worth it if you have enough of them.

As an example am separating the 45 acp rem brass, then using them for low powered lead rounds. Then an undersize die can be used, along with an undersize belling die and crimp set to the shorter rem oal.
 
Shadow9mm,

I've had the same problem with R-P brass. It is thinner at the neck than other makes and seems to quickly work harden and become too springy to resize. I would get maybe one or two reloads out of it, then bullets would start falling in, so I used to cull all of it. When I moved to progressive loading, I got a Dillon press and dies and a friend wanted to reload some R-P on it, and the problem had gone away. The Dillon dies were a little narrower than the old Lyman die I'd been using, and that seemed to be just enough tighter to successfully resize the thin, springy brass.
 
Lol wait until you find a Shell Shock case. How about those fake brass cases made of steel they imported a few years back? I had to swish my magnet through all my range pick-up before loading.
 
Yes, I cull all of my pistol brass. I won't use anything s&b, gfl, cbc or any nato brass in my pistols. I have way too much brass to worry about tight primer pockets being in the mix.

Bill
 
My opinion is a little different on this since my reloads in 9mm/10mm almost never fail when I'm hand-loading them--other than crushing down the cases when there's a mis-aligned bullet or the case mouth wasn't opened quite enough. When my cases do fail, 99% of time it's at the top of the case head (leaving the body in the chamber) when I've pushed a warm load. My personal opinion is that the 9mm and 10mm cases are inherently "weak" (thin) and repeated firings, sizing, expanding etc. stretch and flow the brass enough that it gets brittle pretty quickly, especially if I routinely fire +p loads (which I do since I have several PCC's), this is further aggravated by inconsistent support of the case in pistol chambers. Just my opinion, I could be off my rocker too. ;)

Shell Shock case
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I use them!:D I don't gain all the extra pressure tolerance they claim--but still can generally run them at higher pressures repeatedly more than brass cases. The worst part about them is you have to use their goofy dies.
 
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Dead-Nuts-Zero said:
Friend of mine buys all his 9, 38, & 40 ammo in bulk & it's usually Magtech brand. He gives me all his brass which I reload (no dash).

I prefer it as it cleans up nice & works great in my Dillon 550. I also load a lot of Magtech 380 brass with same great results.

Is it possible your dies need adjusting (more crimp)? Maybe your flaring your case mouth too wide causing part of the problem?

I have so many of my favorites in Win, Federal, CBC, R-P brass that I usually set all the others aside & trade them of something I need. Years ago I ran a random mix of stamps (brass only) through my 550 with very few problems.

Stay Tuned - I'm sure other TFL members with far more experience than I will help you figure out your problems.
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I cull all off beat brands, but especially the Magtec stuff. Unless they’ve changed there is a shelf where the brass gets much thicker, thus greatly reducing the interior capacity and restricting seating depth. I guess the capacity could be worked around by loading it separately with reduced powder but if left in the mixed head stamp brass with normal interior capacity you’re going to have a big problem pressure wise. But, it’s been a while since I’ve seen any so maybe they aren’t like this anymore.
 
For 9mm Amerc, Maxxtech, Freedom Munitions, Xtreme, and Ammoland had the stepped cases for a while. Because of these I started sorting my brass about 14 years ago. I added TulAmmo, Wolf, B-West, SK, TCW, and TPZ as headstamps that get immediately tossed in the recycle bin - they all are very soft brass. I know some people that have loaded these headstamps but the headaches it can cause it is just not worth it.

I will load everything else but WIN once to be used at an indoor range that has a slanted floor that tends to push most brass in front of the firing line or to be left at the outdoor range. I had a friend give me a 3 gallon bucket of 9mm a few years back and most of it was WIN. I am still loading the other-than-WIN cases. About 5 years ago I loaded 105 WIN cases every week for 63 weeks for my weekly range trip. I never had a case failure.

Every time I go to the range I know what brass I have loaded up. If anything other than that headstamp makes it back to my bench I will give it a close examination before I add it to my inventory. I am running a Dillon 550B.
 
Tsquared said:
For 9mm Amerc, Maxxtech, Freedom Munitions, Xtreme, and Ammoland had the stepped cases for a while. Because of these I started sorting my brass about 14 years ago. I added TulAmmo, Wolf, B-West, SK, TCW, and TPZ as headstamps that get immediately tossed in the recycle bin - they all are very soft brass. I know some people that have loaded these headstamps but the headaches it can cause it is just not worth it.

I will load everything else but WIN once to be used at an indoor range that has a slanted floor that tends to push most brass in front of the firing line or to be left at the outdoor range. I had a friend give me a 3 gallon bucket of 9mm a few years back and most of it was WIN. I am still loading the other-than-WIN cases. About 5 years ago I loaded 105 WIN cases every week for 63 weeks for my weekly range trip. I never had a case failure.

Every time I go to the range I know what brass I have loaded up. If anything other than that headstamp makes it back to my bench I will give it a close examination before I add it to my inventory. I am running a Dillon 550B.
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I run a sharpie across the heads of my reloads. Stays in place pretty well. That way I always know which are mine regardless of headstamp. If I have primers that felt easy to seat I put an x on the headstamp instead of a line. This way I can shoot it, and throw in in the scrap pile if it makes it back.
 
Shadow9mm said:
I run a sharpie across the heads of my reloads. Stays in place pretty well. That way I always know which are mine regardless of headstamp. If I have primers that felt easy to seat I put an x on the headstamp instead of a line. This way I can shoot it, and throw in in the scrap pile if it makes it back.
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Back in the day, my dad used to wash his brass in a solution of 5 parts caustic soda, 10 parts copper carbonate, and 50 parts distilled water. Depending on how long you let it set would result in a shade of orange.

It was an extra step that I never bothered with. I was a brass scrounger for many years for certain calibers. By summer time I will have nothing but the WIN headstamp in 9mm. Most of my 223/5.56 is Lake City that I acquired from a mil surplus. My 45ACP is all Blazer small primer. My 10mm is 90% Starline and my 6.8SPC is all S&B. Those are what I shoot most. My 357 takes any 357 and 38 Spl brass that I can get. I got back into 357 year before last and I am still building my brass. I would like more 357 brass.
 
As I get older, I get lazier. I buy new bulk brass for about everything now, then reload it until it dies. In pistol, Winchester brass was very reliable back before they moved out of Alton, IL. These days it is usually OK, but sometimes is out-sourced. What I've come to rely on is that Starline is as good as the old Winchester was, but has about half the weight variation. Pretty much all my handgun brass is Starline now.

For rifle brass, I keep a number of options. I still have about 700 new Norma cases in 6.5-284. I have a good deal of never-loaded Match LC in 30-06 and 7.62 and 5.56 NATO. The greatest quantity of new brass I have is 308/7.62, for which I have Starline, ADG, LC, IMI, Lapua, Remington, and Winchester in enough quantity for the rest of my days. This appears to represent a substantial investment, but the prices seem to have been going up faster than inflation over the last 20 years, so I may actually be ahead in that regard.
 
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