9mm brass inspection

[pak]

I finally have everything I need to load up some 9mm rounds. Last night I cleaned and de primed all brass I have collected. All of my brass is from the range I shoot at. All was picked up off the ground.

What am I looking for when inspecting 9mm brass? How do I know if it is safe to load or not?

[XDRoX]

As long as it's not cracked or split it most likely going to reload fine.

[mjmagee67]

Cracks or splitting at the mouth of the case is the main thing. Excessive bludging at the base of the case, I have had a few that looked ballooned out at the base, I have no idea why they would look like that, so I tossed them. Look for crimped primers, those are really annoying when one slips by and you try to prime them.

[J-cat]

Regarding the bulges, after you size a clean case look at the casehead just north of the extractor groove. You'll notice that your sizer will not size all the way down to the extractor groove. That's because a 9mm rarely expands all the way to the extractor groove unless it is overloaded, as in someone trying to get 1400 FPS out of a 124gr bullet to make Major Power Factor. Toss those cases which show evidence of expansion within 1/10" of the extractor groove.

[UnknownShooter]

With 9mm, i look for deep gouges in the body of the brass, and any damage at the rim..
I pull any brass where the primer pops out too easily, and I have a few headstamps that I don't want to mess with, because they are reputed to have problems keeping a bullet seated with enough neck-tension - "a-merc", and "gfl"..

I also pull pmc brass, because the flash-holes for the primers are often off-center, though I've had other reloaders tell me the brass is still quite good..

Ive recently found some chinese brass with no headstamp at all, and I figure theres a reason they arent putting their name on it..

You would have found them when decapping already, but I've found just enough berdan-primed 9mm to make that check worthwhile now too. That usually has a cyrillic-looking headstamp. If you're able to score enough brass to make it worthwhile (maybe 5k cases?), i like to sort & load in 100-round matched-headstamp batches.. the cases vary just enough in length & wall thickness that they "feel" different when you're resizing, crimping & seating primers.

[GeoffLinder]

Also look for crimped in primers, these will need to have the crimp ring swaged or reamed out before they get primed.

Additionally, as noted above, if it has been used for major power factor, you may want to chuck it. You can usually tell by the flattened/smeared primer and/or well beaten down headstamp from having the casehead slammed into the breech face.