Separating pistol brass by times fired?

['09CTS-V&'87Turbo-T]

I reload in batch which keeps all of the brass same times reloaded & fired.

[hambam105]

Brass that comes home with me gets cleaned first step. Then I manually punch out the primer and clean the case flash hole.

This gives me plenty of time to catch sheet-bag pieces of brass. And the last step is to manually run each cartridge thru a headspace gauge as sort of a last chance inspection.

Note: I always keep a pliers handy to crush the case mouth to avoid the bad ones get recirculated. And I have more than just a few.

[Che762x39]

Who does it? Seems like it doesn't really matter considering how many times it can be used.

I do. Cops train on new factory ammo and they do not pick up their brass. i.e. You pick up 5,000 pieces of W-W. I keep them together and load it. I mark it as once fired. Next it will be twice fired.

Now revolver brass is easier to keep in "lots". The reason you want to keep it "lots" because recently I was loading up some 44 Special and I set up to crimp a batch of Starline brass and did not realized I included up some old R-P brass. The Starline rounds were perfect and then after I did the first R-P piece I realize that it was significantly longer (O.A.L.) and came out all messed up.

[stilly]

Rule ONE about Reload Club, ALL brass that has been fired is ONCE FIRED. Rule TWO about Reload Club, all brass that has been fired more than once is ONCE FIRED BRASS... And remember, you DO NOT TALK ABOUT RELOAD CLUB...


And pistol brass has a life of about 19 shots each before it is pretty wasted and about to fall apart or has a very hammered out base.

[Bigedski]

I just keep reloading them until they show signs of failure then I toss them I bet I have some that have been reloaded 20 or more times.

[alexisjohnson]

I'm new to reloading and so i have my limits. I don't feel comfortable loading 9 mm after a certain point. I'm guessing when i have reloaded a batch 10 or 15 times....i'm going to just toss everything in that batch.

Its just not worth it for me to 'push the limits'. Once you have used something 10x or 15x....its not financially worth it to keep using them.

[TexasJackKin]

My friends father, who taught me how to reload back in the '70 would reload cracked .38 spl plinking rounds. He would mark them with a "felt marker" (not sure if they had sharpies back then, and discard them after that one last shot.

He had 6 sons and money was tight. I'm not recommitting this practice, but I don't get all worried up about pistol or revolver brass. For the record, I discard cracked brass, without loading it one last time

[wbunning]

I keep my brass in gallon freezer bags, inside bins by caliber. Each caliber bin has a bag of cleaned brass, and a bag of dirty brass, each marked by how many times it has been shot. For example, the .38 special bin would have a bag marked ".38 spec CLEAN 5X" and another one marked ".38 spec DIRTY 6X". My brass, except for 9mm, is primarily all one headstamp.

[Joezamboni]

I tried to, then realized it was a waste of my time regarding pistol brass.

I do have an inspection process and if I see a well worn case that has probably made it though 8 reloads I toss it. I loose and pick up so much though that it's probably only ~2% of the total cases I'm reloading. I had some Fiocchi 380 ACP cases that had a distinct case head separation line forming so I tossed them.

Revolver cases are a different story though. Still haven't tossed any yet.

[Oceanbob]

Generally no. But.....I do track my 10MM hot reloads.
I rarely run more than 50 to 100 in any one batch.
Range plinking 10MM I don't track. Medium power for fun
Plinking doesn't put much stress on the case. (Same as .40)

Be well
Bob.

A reminder to get into reloading before the coming ammo Crush.....

Buy a press and stock up on components.....

[robert101]

I only track magnum or semi-magnum loads like .357, 44, and 10MM. All the other standard loading get run until the brass splits. I don't run loads at maximum data either. Maybe 80 to 90% if Max. I will max out 45 Automatic and 38 S&W loads in well used brass though.