Stop wasting you steel cases

at my range, 223 brass is littered everywhere. just today I picked up 900 pieces in the 20 minutes I had to scrounge before close. here soon Im going to have picked up and sold enough brass to buy me one of em fancy dillon presses.

GLOOB said:

If you can't tell bad neck tension by feel or by the "bench test," then you shouldn't be reloading brass cases, either! Brass or steel, doesn't matter. When the tension is lost, toss the case.

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No with brass cases you can anneal the necks and repeat.
I anneal the necks on my .308 Lapua brass every 3 firings since I seem to get very tight groups for 3 firings before the groups start to open up.
I have no quantitative measurement on neck tension but I do see that the end result is not as good after 3 reloads unless I anneal.

I pick up more .223, 9mm, .40, .45ACP, 7.62x39 and many other calibers than I can ever shoot so trying to reload steel cases seems like a waste of time to me.
If it works for you who am I to tell you not to do it.

You all can't be that hard up to reload ammo lol

The Berdan primer is another issue. As long as I can get Boxer-primed brass by the bucketful, I won't reload steel cases.

Knew a guy that "showed" everyone how he could in fact reload aluminum cases and get one more firing out of them before they split. He did this for a year maybe two before he had to replace the Kart barrel because of chamber erosion.

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I dont buy that. I'd love to see the proof. I load all my brass till they split too. I will even load them one more time after they split, if I can get enough tension to hold the bullets. These go to matches where you cant pick up your brass.

jcwit said:

There must be a reason the manufactures state thats its not recommended, ya think?

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It is usually printed in the sentence immediately prior to or after the one which they also not recommend shooting reloaded ammunition.

It is usually printed in the sentence immediately prior to or after the one which they also not recommend shooting reloaded ammunition.

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Have never ever seen that statement on a box of ammo. Show me.

Further if you wish to reload steel cases, go for it. I will not, discussion over as far as I'm concerned. As I said before, I really do not care, heck you may reload with small pebbles for all I care, if that makes you happy.

I reload .223 and require accuracy under 1/8 inch center to center at 100 yds. Overall group size for 5 rounds at .228 to .300. That BTW is consistantly not just once in a while.

jcwit said:

Have never ever seen that statement on a box of ammo. Show me.

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I haven't seen it on a box of ammo, either. I was speaking of firearms:

I haven't seen it on a box of ammo, either. I was speaking of firearms:

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And I was speaking of boxes of loaded ammo, which is what we are discussing.

I know of no firearms manufacturer that recommends reloads. Brass, steel or whatever.

jcwit said:

I reload .223 and require accuracy under 1/8 inch center to center at 100 yds. Overall group size for 5 rounds at .228 to .300. That BTW is consistantly not just once in a while.

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My offhand or prone isn't nearly that good!

jcwit said:

And I was speaking of boxes of loaded ammo, which is what we are discussing.

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Well, then I misunderstood what you meant when you said 'manufacturers don't recommend it'.

I haven't seen on any boxes of ammo a recommendation not to reload it.

Here's a box of Tula and I don't see any such warning:

Wish I knew how to post pics like you do.

I remember seeing over the years but do not remember where.

Memory is shot from old age and chemo.

http://thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=281829

http://www.ar15armory.com/forums/wolf-steel-case-s-reload-t118038.html

As implied earlier, if you feel the need to reload steel cases, go for it. In a nutshell I don't. Not likely to in my future either.

I fall in do what makes you happy category on this subject but don't try to "sell" me. I have zero desire or need to even try it. I don't own any ammo in steel cases except for Combloc. I also have 55 gallon drums of once fired Lake City brass in .45, 5.56 and 7.62 so why even think about it. I don't want to hammer the chambers of my good rifles with steel cases. Just does not make metallurgical sense to me. As long as I have brass it is what I will use. But I will archive others data who are doing steel in the event the planet flips on its axis and my brass cases all fly off into space.

I've reloaded lots of steel case .45ACP with zero issues. I pick up my Wolf/Tula empties at the range and reload them for when I shoot at my friends ranch were I'm going to lose all my brass in the weeds.

Never had the need or confidence to reload higher pressure steel cased rounds.

hueyville said:

I don't want to hammer the chambers of my good rifles with steel cases. Just does not make metallurgical sense to me.

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Can you explain this statement a little further?

I don't waste steel cases.

All that junk goes to the shredder as scrap sheet steel. It's worth ten cents a pound right now. I take buckets full mixed in with old appliances, car parts, etc. It all melts.

As implied earlier, if you feel the need to reload steel cases, go for it. In a nutshell I don't. Not likely to in my future either.

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Yeah what he said.

Same here.

Maybe we should save steel boxer primed .223 cases for that theoretical time when we have no choice or brass cases are rare and pricey. I suppose it could happen.

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Given how long properly annealed brass lasts and how much is out there, that will likely be when laser guns will be a better choice.

I used to load steel cases. I'm still shooting them. They are nice to have for shoot & scoot so I don't lose my brass.

Steel has more press then brass. Neck tension isn't going to be a problem.

Accuracy is just as good. I shoot nice little holes when it is load With Hornady bullets. I normally just load it with pull down stuff tho.

It does ware your dies tho. After maybe 5K I noticed my besides getting tighter. I measured the manderal to find it .002" smaller. I called Lee to order a new one. They asked how it wore. After telling them it was from loading sell cases they said that was a common practice & couldn't understand how such a soft steel could ware out the tool. They refused to let me pay for a replacement & actually sent two to replace it.

I now have a bunch of brass for 223 so I won't be loading as much of it. Unless I get into wet tumbling. Now that I've seen how good those cases look in the pick above I want some.

Hacker15e, Steel is harder than brass. Chambers are steel and if your cases are steel there has to be some increased wear over the course of thousands of rounds between brass and steel. I do machine work for a living, I can cut or machine steel with steel, but if I try to use brass for tooling it will do nothing to steel. Just seems like the steel case going into the chamber, expanding during firing then more friction based wear as it is extracted my "guess" is that steel will wear a chamber, extractors/ejectors much quicker than brass. How many rounds for it to be of any significance, I don't know, but I choose to use brass for my brass. I would be interested to see if there is any scientific research on this subject. If I am wrong would like to see the data proving it.

It would be nice to know the properties of the steel in question.
Anyone have the specs on this stuff?

well I dont! where I shoot EVERYONE reloads and we also have a few brass scrounges who come by almost every day and sell what they find.
I find .223 brass by small handfulls at best. its just nice to know that on the days I dont find a small handfull of brass, that I do have a viable option.

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That is a concern to the younger folks, myself, I've been collecting brass for well over 50 years, so I have bunches, even in calibers I don't reload.

I highly doubt any manufacturer of automotive wheel balancing weights would recommend
My preferred use of their product as bullet casting material...

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True, but they don't say not to either. They also don't recommend to use their weights for boat anchors or to make fishing weights either. I doubt they care one way or the other.

I don't waste steel cases.

All that junk goes to the shredder as scrap sheet steel. It's worth ten cents a pound right now. I take buckets full mixed in with old appliances, car parts, etc. It all melts.

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Excellant point! One club I belong to we collect the spent .22 rimfire cases and turn them in for recycling. Boosted our clubs treasury by almost $1000.00 bucks a while back.

Jcwitt, your club may want to invest in a bullet swager and use all the .22 rimfire cases to make jacketed..223 bullets and sell to reloaders. Just an idea. I turn all my .22 cases into bullets for my AR's thus another reason no panic about run on .223 bullets. Everytime I bust a cap with a rimfire, I create a bullet jacket. Now that is recycling...