Loading old brass

[Premier87]

Hey guys, fairly new to reloading so bear with me. Went to the range with a friend that had old ammo from the 60's and he shot them without a problem. I sized, deprimed, and gauged them. I did find one case with a split neck. Some of the headsstamps are WCC64,TW67,RA64., my question is can I reload the brass safely?

[bcrich]

I have reloaded 30'06 from the 50's without any issues ...if you keep getting split necks try annealing them to get a few more loadings, YouTube annealing brass if you aren't familiar with that yet.

[LynnJr]

In brass life that isn't real old brass.

[fguffey]

Some of the headsstamps are WCC64,TW67,RA64., my question is can I reload the brass safely?

I have 30/06 with WCC head stamps in the early '40s, TW 30/06 cases from the early '40s and RA cases with early head stamps; I have formed the same 'old' military cases from the early '40 to 8mm57 etc. I have never had a failure due to a case being old. I have had cracked/split necks, all of the split necks were on 7mm57 cases that were formed from surplus 30/06 cases. The necks split because I did not anneal the necks.

F. Guffey

[racinjason233]

I have early 30's brass and it was hard to deprime, I broke about 10 pins, I had problems with primers staying in on some and when I went to trim, the necks split on some. old and kinda brittle is my guess. I have plenty other brass so I just tossed it in the bin and kept going.

To answer your question:

YES load away, just make sure you inspect after each step of the brass prep.

[Che762x39]

... Some of the headsstamps are WCC64,TW67,RA64., my question is can I reload the brass safely?

Did you have a box of WCC64 and a box of RA64, etc. Or was it a bag of reloads with misc brass with headstamps from the 1960s? Because if it was reloads they could have been reloaded once, twice or 30 times. Still good for reloading.

[JackEllis]

Unless it's been repeatedly worked in a die or exposed to high heat (hundreds of degrees) or in some cases exposed to chemicals or moisture, the mechanical properties of a piece of metal typically don't change the way plastics or organic materials do. All other things being equal, they are not affected by how long they've been in metallic form. The composition of the brass used to manufacture new cases may have changed over the last 70-100 years, but probably not by much.

[Premier87]

Thanks for the info guys

[waveslayer]

Just anneal the brass before you load it, trim etc.. sounds like it's all brittle

My wife thinks I only have 3 guns

[aspenvalley]

I got a lot of 45 acp brass in package deali picked up from 1953 it loads and shoots just fine. I have no idea how many times it has been load other than the three times I have. No issues or failures so far.