Range brass vs. Sorted by head stamp? Does it make a difference?

[anonymouscuban]

For a power factor of 125 I always load up 126 just to be safe.

Legit. You should have no trouble with chrono. LOL

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[kevin c]

125 is the PF floor below which you shoot for no score. 165 is the major scoring PF floor for some divisions, equivalent to a 124 grain 9mm traveling at 1330 fps. A common "cushion" is 5 PF points so that same slug would step out at 1370 fps, or a 180 grain 40 cal round at 944 fps.

My division is 125 PF or above. My Glocks function better around 135 PF so that's what I load to, and an added benefit is that I never worry about "making PF".

The smaller velocity SD shows the load is more consistent from shot to shot. The recoil impulse isn't what worries the competitor, it's meeting the rules requirement that the eight rounds of his ammo he presents for testing will average over the minimum velocity that he needs to score competitively. A wider SD increases the chance that some rounds in his sample will be low enough in velocity to pull the average velocity down below the threshold.

Back on topic. I sort by head stamp not only for consistent ammo, but also to eliminate brass that doesn't work for me. I cast, coat and load my own bullets, which I size over the standard used by commercial cast bullet producers because they shoot more accurately. Some thick walled brass brands shave the coating or the bullets themselves, and some are so thick that they stick in tight chambers. Those I don't load.

[ysr_racer]

Legit. You should have no trouble with chrono. LOL

There's so much bull **** here these days, I just thought I'd add a little

(I really load for 133-135)

[dadswickedammo]

Theirs 2 types of reoladers.
1. Reload to shoot alot good ammo and save money.
2. Reloads to shoot the best quality ammo he can build.
Sorting, trimming, measuring cleaning doing all he can to perfect his craft.

[Corbin Dallas]

Normally I sort my 9mm brass by head stamp. But I had a hundred or so mixed range trash.

I'm talking cbc, s&b, lax, perfecta, fiocchi, blazer, and a bunch of other crap I never heard of. I loaded up a hundred rounds and you know what?

They all went bang, they all fed fine, they all punched holes in the target.

Thoughts ?

I trash Amerc, ammoload, IMT, perfecta and xtreme. OH yea, and any stepped stuff.

Military crip goes in a special bin for later.

[JoyfulJoker]

I'm a new reloader. I sort so I know what to swage. Win NT, Aguila ( primers go in , but barely), I separated the CBC( Magtech) but it loaded fine. I also separated the Blazer after reading a lot of complaints. It loaded fine. I have a few thousand S&B I'm saving for loading Precision Delta JHP's. I made a power factor of 131 with mixed brass. I was surprised how low power the manufacturers load maximums were. Using Win 231 and 9mm 125 grain LRN. I've run across a few Extremes and Perfecta as well as LAX. They loaded fine.

[ysr_racer]

Why does everyone rag on Perfecta? It's made by Fiocchi.

[TomReloaded]

... I don't even clean my pistol brass *most* of the time. Straight from the ground, back into the press.

Toss when they split. I used to sort by times shot, but now once fired federal gets tossed in with 10th fired winchester. Even dirty range brass ends up more accurate and more consistent than most fmj factory ammo.

[bruce381]

"Regarding Maxtech brass, I've reloaded and fired plenty of that in .357M, .44M, and .45 ACP. Works great every time, so I don't see the problem with it."

in 45 acp it is fine with .451 jacketed bullets but cast at .452 will bulge the case since the wall is 1 tho too thick.

Then if you run it threw the lee factory crimp die it will then chamber BUT the bullet will get squized down to .449 or so which then leads or tumbles, so no I toss them.

[Swagman00]

I've always had a personal hatred for S&B. A long time ago when I first started reloading I would trim cases to make 9x18. Lo and behold, S&B used brass plated steel that jacked up a couple bits. I use a magnet now to get those little bastards.

Their stuff is pretty thick too. After the last case size I'll do a final caliper check and plunk test it. Compared to most brass those damn things bind more and have tolerances either on the edge or a bit over than others.

[Cowboy T]

"Regarding Maxtech brass, I've reloaded and fired plenty of that in .357M, .44M, and .45 ACP. Works great every time, so I don't see the problem with it."

in 45 acp it is fine with .451 jacketed bullets but cast at .452 will bulge the case since the wall is 1 tho too thick.

Then if you run it threw the lee factory crimp die it will then chamber BUT the bullet will get squized down to .449 or so which then leads or tumbles, so no I toss them.

That depends on the gun that you're shooting. I use exclusively cast bullets in my .45 ACP rounds. My .45's like my cast bullets, which generally mic at 0.4525". One mould cavity is slightly big at just over 0.453", which is fine for the Ruger SR45, but just an eensy-bit tight for the 1911. This is true for all of brass types that I've used.

My solution is to size them to 0.452". Then everything chambers fine, including when in Maxtech brass.

The Lee Factory Crimp Die turns out not to be necessary. There was only one corner case when I used to use the FCD, and it was with .38 Special. Proper bullet sizing fixed even that problem, so now the FCD pretty much gathers dust.

[kevin c]

I ran an experiment with stepped 9mm Freedom Munitions brass, wondering whether there were actually issues with it or just widely propagated internet rumors (;^]). I'd heard that there were lots of case separations at the step, and that there might be over pressure issues from each reduced case volume.

I got 500 once fired cases (pick ups from a friend's shooting who bought factory new and didn't reload)that I'm guessing are all the same production lot. I used my standard load for USPSA Production Division, basically a 147 coated cast at 900 fps and SAAMI spec OAL. The cases were marked, shot in practice, all through the same Glock 34 with an OFM barrel, recovered, cleaned and reloaded as a single segregated lot.

Chrono graphing the load showed essentially the same velocities as using non stepped brass, so by that criterion pressure was not changed much, if at all.

IIRC, I loaded the cases at least fifteen times before I lost interest in the experiment. Of the ~80% that I recovered, I had occasional case mouth splits, but zero case separations.

So, with that lot of brass, my load, and through my gun, there were no issues. YMMV.

[bruce381]

"My solution is to size them to 0.452". Then everything chambers fine, including when in Maxtech brass."

Maybe Maxtech is so bad they have good brass too LOL.

.452 bullet SWC loaded to 1.250 for me WILL not even go into a case gauge let alone my KART barrels.

let me add now that i think about it its not 100% maxtech bad but a good portion will be over size.

[Fishslayer]

.452 bullet SWC loaded to 1.250 for me WILL not even go into a case gauge let alone my KART barrels.

Is that a 200gr SWC?

SWCs you generally seat to a thumbnail's width of the shoulder. My Xtreme SWC run 1.21" - 1.22"

[bhilliker@comcast.net]

I'm a relatively new loader 4 years 100K rounds, 14 calibers. The only issue I have found with mixed head stamps is loading .308 on a single stage. That one has given me a significant amount of grief to where going forward I will sort by stamp and re-set my seating/crimp die for each brand.