Worth sorting brass?

[Colorado S14]

I thought I would poll the group prior to getting in to any significant personal testing. With cartridges where primer pockets are the limiting factor in brass life do you believe it is worth sorting between twice, three, four, etc. time. fired brass?

I’ve been reloading a lot of 224 Valkyrie lately and the primer pockets definitely go out before you have to worry about any sort of case had separation or other brass life failures. I recently picked up a primer pocket go/no-go gauge. After the first firing do you think I would be giving up much accuracy (precision) by just dumping it all into a fired bucket and just pulling cases as they fail the pocket gauge?

Thanks for your take.

 

[clcustom1911]

Your logic makes sense. Based on readings here, it appears guys clearly separate their brass by number of firings.

I do that with some of my brands of brass I want utmost precision (Lapua, Atlas). I don't with my pistol brass, or most of my other brass. I have a shit ton of 223/556 brass that has crimped primer pockets so I sort that into brass that's prepped and unprepped.

I do examine all of my 6.5CR and 7mm RemMag brass for signs of case head separation on each firing. Showing signs? Into the trash they go. In general, I try and go fire through one brand of brass at a time so it ends up being self-sorting.

 

[_Raining]

Well you can't really sort them, you gotta keep em separate from the get go. I think most people will always be within one firing of all cases. AKA if you have 500 pieces and you shoot 100 at a time then you would have 500 virgin pieces, then 100 once fired and 400 virgin, then 200 once fired and 300 virgin etc till you have 500 once fired, then start over.

 

[A&8's]

No. I buy 500pcs at a time (1500 for my WM). At 1st, they all get cycled thru evenly. Then I get lazy and reload a couple hundred 1 or 2 times more than the rest. IMO, as long as they are from the same lot and you haven't trimmed some more than others (excessively), they should be go to go. At least for the level of accuracy I (and my guns) are capable of.

 

[Lunchbox27]

I do 3-400 at a time. It is great when you can just load up and go. But, sucks when you gotta process them all over again.

The life of a reloader.

 

[Crabcore]

I buy several hundred pieces of brass when i get a new barrel. Then I keep them all on the same firing count. Once they are all shot the first time I load them again and so on and so forth until the barrel is toast. I generally do batches of 100 to 200. I don't do any other sorting.

 

[Rocketvapor]

If you have a fixed number of shots required for a competition, you probably load up a few extra just in case. Then you end up with a few left overs.
Maybe load an odd batch for load development. Left overs again.
If you load 100, 200, 300 just to shoot them up then you probably won't have left overs.
Just go home when out of ammo.

I run new cases to MAKE once fired cases. Sort of easy to keep track of. Then the once fired always get mixed up with twice fired.

So, it's new, once fired, few fired, many fired.
The many fired are for plinking only.

 

[lightman]

Part of the info that I put on the label on my ammo is times fired. I try to keep them the same on my precision ammo. My plinking ammo and pistol ammo gets loaded with mixed head stamps and mixed times fired.

Does it make any difference? Not sure! Maybe in a benchrest rifle and maybe in a custom tactical or varmint rifle. In a factory hunting rifle, probably not.

Its hard to keep up with them. When I load enough ammo for a match and for sighters, sometimes I don't fire all of the sighters. Now I have 2 or 3 loaded rounds that are different.