Odd question about pistol brass

.40 S&W will nest inside .44 mag and is very hard to see. The .44 mag case will then go into a carbide sizing die with only a small difference in force from a normal size/decap. But it won’t come back out without bringing the carbide sizing ring with it. Don’t ask. . Inspect all brass carefully!

ATLDave said:

In short, any of the common ones that are about .05" in diameter difference will nest quite firmly, particularly with tumbling media in there to fill in the gap!

If you are tumbling a bunch of stuff together, try to throw in the brass in descending size order. In other words, toss in the 45, then the 40/10, then the 9/38/380, then the 32, etc. After about 15 seconds of tumbling in a vibe cleaner, the cases fill with media and will not generally "eat" the smaller cases anymore.

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I have a bunch of sorted cases why would I dump them back into the Tumbler together and have to sort them again?

1KPerDay said:

I have a bunch of sorted cases why would I dump them back into the Tumbler together and have to sort them again?

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For times when you come back from the range with 200 cases of various calibers and want to clean it.

Some people stock up dirty brass. Others clean it as it comes into their possession.

ATLDave said:

For times when you come back from the range with 200 cases of various calibers and want to clean it.

Some people stock up dirty brass. Others clean it as it comes into their possession.

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Understood... but if I go through the hassle of sorting by caliber I'm not going to dump them all into the same tumbler at the same time and make myself sort them again afterward. Which is what my comment was about.

ATLDave said:

For times when you come back from the range with 200 cases of various calibers and want to clean it.

Some people stock up dirty brass. Others clean it as it comes into their possession.

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I don't sort brass till I have at least 5 gallons to sort. It's been hot way too long this summer and I've got around 7-8 gallons I need to sort. The shell sorter trays are a lifesaver. I also purchased the .380 plate to keep those Commie cases out of my 9mm stream.

Texas10mm said:

I don't sort brass till I have at least 5 gallons to sort. It's been hot way too long this summer and I've got around 7-8 gallons I need to sort. The shell sorter trays are a lifesaver. I also purchased the .380 plate to keep those Commie cases out of my 9mm stream.

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Dang I wish I could get 5 gallons of brass ahead. Wife and I are shooting 1500 rounds a month and it's like I'm eternally behind on prep... oh wait, the tumbler just shut off.. time to rinse and dehydrate. Better set the table up to clean yesterday's firearms!

Erief0g said:

Dang I wish I could get 5 gallons of brass ahead. Wife and I are shooting 1500 rounds a month and it's like I'm eternally behind on prep... oh wait, the tumbler just shut off.. time to rinse and dehydrate. Better set the table up to clean yesterday's firearms!

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I just had to open my backup 5 gallon bucket of .45 ACP brass. My 5 gallon bucket of 9mm brass is almost half empty. I really need to get busy. It's supposed to cool down this week. Ideally I'd like to get up to 10 gallons of both .45 ACP and 9mm.

9mm is normally laying on the ground at the range waiting to be picked up. I have been picking up some .45 ACP too, just not as much. I'd be happier than a steer in tall clover if I could get some more 10mm brass that wasn't priced like gold.

Please notice, spring 1898, the OP originator, hasn't checked back in on his own thread he started so it must not be important to him.

Troll question?

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OP must have had something specific in mind. I can't think why the question would even have been valuable as a "troll" question. Not like the person is an ATF agent and asked a question aimed to find out if someone here will sell them top-secret plans to convert a single-shot Marlin 100 into an automatic weapon.

The only reason I can think of for the question that remotely makes sense was if I was going to use one of those "If it fits, it ships" boxes to ship as much brass as possible somwhwere and wanted to nest several calibers to save space.

berettaprofessor said:

The only reason I can think of for the question that remotely makes sense was if I was going to use one of those "If it fits, it ships" boxes to ship as much brass as possible somwhwere and wanted to nest several calibers to save space.

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This is what I was thinking, maybe to store as much brass in the least space possible, perhaps an apartment dwelling prepper?

I eat my elephants one bite at a time. I never let my unsorted batches get too big to be quickly managed, and then I process independently by caliber.

I said this 8 posts ago.....and people keep on talking about it.

Nesting is z pain in the butt and most try to avoid it, not go out of their way do ig on purpose.

I sort my brass dirty and keep it sorted.

If I have a large quantity of mixed range pickups and some get eaten, I’m not going to was a lot of time worrying about it.

I don't sort brass till I have at least 5 gallons to sort. It's been hot way too long this summer and I've got around 7-8 gallons I need to sort. The shell sorter trays are a lifesaver.

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The shell sorter style screens are better than picking them out one by one but a 5 gallon bucket is still quite a bit of work with them.

Takes about 15 min to go through a bucket full with the one I built and it does a better job sorting.

jmorris said:

The shell sorter style screens are better than picking them out one by one but a 5 gallon bucket is still quite a bit of work with them.

Takes about 15 min to go through a bucket full with the one I built and it does a better job sorting.

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If you will build me one of those for around $55 shipped I'll pay ya right now.

If I have small batches of brass to clean then I am not above mixing them in. I wet tumble and keep the nesting casings apart though. FWIW I do a final inspection of them after that and it ts no extra time to sort them again then.