Do you track & keep your pistol cases in batches?

[olstyn]

I don't separate brass by how many times fired, because most of my brass comes from IDPA matches and was already reloaded ?x by somebody else. Kinda gets passed around if you know what I mean.

Same for me, except substitute "USPSA" for "IDPA." Some of my fellow competitors don't reload, so some of the brass I pick up after matches is once fired. The rest? No idea, but as long as it's not mangled and it doesn't split when I load it, no worries. I pitch cases that are bulged/too hard to size, as well.

Also I sort out any brass by Freedom Munitions (FM and....IMT????) which has that infernal internal step, and it goes straight into the brass recycle bucket.

Yup. I try to avoid even picking those up. I've personally seen one of those separate at the ledge - got stuck in the chamber and ended the match for the person it happened to. Admittedly, it was in a 9 Major Open gun, but still, with 9mm brass being effectively free, there's just no reason to bother with that ledge stuff. (FM, IMT, and AMMOLOAD are the headstamps I've seen it in, although I've seen a few FM lately that don't have it.)

I've been sorting out CBC and saving it for later for a while due to the fact that they tend not to be tolerant of the seating depth required for MG bullets to cooperate with my two Walther guns' short/tight chambers. I figure when I eventually switch bullet types, maybe I'll find one that plays nice with that brass, and then I'll have a decent quantity of a single headstamp to use for a while. I just look at the headstamp before putting any given piece of brass into the press and segregate them out at that time, though; pre-sorting seems like it would take too much time and effort.

[Peally]

For 9 and 45 it's always been "until the case falls apart". If a case looks super sketchy or dirty I'll chuck it. Can't have ugly brass.

[Sal Picante]

I shoot indoors, primarily, so it is easy for me to recover my brass.

• I separate a "batch", as measured by a 5 gallon bucket. This is mostly mixed stuff.
• I keep cleaning/loading from that specific bucket until I find more than 2 split casings in a session. After that, the pickup from the session goes to the scrap bucket.
• I'll keep cycling through the stuff until all of it is in the scrap bucket. That's ~6 loadings of minor PF ammo. 9MM actually has a fairly high chamber pressure (comparable to 40, really) so the brass doesn't last as long as you'd think.
• I try to source once-fired brass from PD's, etc. and aggregated that all into 5-gallon buckets. Then the cycle begins again...
• I keep a supply of cleaned "match brass" which I know is once-fired. This I load for major matches.

[JAD]

With 45 I segregate large and small primer, but age really isn't a factor. I will shoot split cases as long as they hold powder.

[CCT125US]

I separated and sorted for years. So many more areas to spend time on. As mentioned, there are headstamps I don't like to load. FM, CBC / Magtech, nickel cases in general, any oddball maker that has a stiff rebound in the die. After loading thousands of rounds 15 plus times, I stopped caring. My time is better spent working on not sucking.

[-ad-]

Thanks for the advise and ideas guys. I wish I could get brass as cheap as what you get it in the states. With costs getting close to half a dollar per case the option of tossing out a batch of 1,000 cases because a few are split is an expensive option.

I like the idea of tracking brass as shots fired, instead of actual x100 batches and will give this a try to see if it takes up too much of my time. It's much better than what I had first planned (group batches together in lots of 100's)!

[CCT125US]

Thanks for the advise and ideas guys. I wish I could get brass as cheap as what you get it in the states. With costs getting close to half a dollar per case the option of tossing out a batch of 1,000 cases because a few are split is an expensive option.

I like the idea of tracking brass as shots fired, instead of actual x100 batches and will give this a try to see if it takes up too much of my time. It's much better than what I had first planned (group batches together in lots of 100's)!

If the loaded rounds end up in an box, it's easy to run a sharpie over all the primers and mark them. That way any unmarked scavenged cases can be put into another batch. All of "your" cases can be tracked by times loaded if that makes you feel better. When I took a class from TLG, I used brass that had been loaded 12 times. We policed our brass at the end of class and I considered them lost. At that point I could care less about losing 1300 cases.

[olstyn]

If the loaded rounds end up in an box, it's easy to run a sharpie over all the primers and mark them.

It would be easy to have multiple colors of permanent marker, too. Reasonably simple to keep track of multiple batches that way.

[dbateman]

Thanks for the advise and ideas guys. I wish I could get brass as cheap as what you get it in the states. With costs getting close to half a dollar per case the option of tossing out a batch of 1,000 cases because a few are split is an expensive option.

I like the idea of tracking brass as shots fired, instead of actual x100 batches and will give this a try to see if it takes up too much of my time. It's much better than what I had first planned (group batches together in lots of 100's)!

What country do you live in ?

You don't necessarily have to throw the cases out, I suppose it depends on what you're doing.
If you're just shooting local matches ect and not real worried if you have an ammo issue now and then just keep on loading them, if you're going away and investing a bit more time and money you're better off just replacing your brass when it starts to fail.

I am about to replace all of my 38super brass, my 38super brass is about five years old. I have no idea how many loding cycles those cases have been thru.
In my situation by the time I have a few cases fail the brass has paid for itself.

[olstyn]

What country do you live in ?

That question occurred to me, too. The idea that 9mm cases are a scarce/expensive resource that needs to be carefully conserved is foreign to me. (Normally I think of them as free.) I shudder to think what loaded ammo must cost wherever -ad- lives.