Bullets, Primers and Brass: FILO or FIFO?

Depends entirely on what we're talking about. Powders and primers; FIFO. Bullets? Depends entirely on what I need for a particular load.

When it makes a difference (in my mind) I’m a FIFO adherent.

I’m also moderately well organized and due to space & multi-use constraints, keep the place neat. But, since I just started reloading in the fall of 2019, I don’t have years & decades of accumulated stuff either so keeping organized isn’t difficult.

All of my supplies were purchased during a brief window from September 2019 through December 2020 so for all practical purposes they all came in at the same time. On each box of primers I wrote the purchase month/year, but not on powders.

I do try to using brass on FIFO rotation but that’s difficult to do without spending more effort than I want to.

Good survey. I hope to learn a lot.

I FIFO everything, within reason.

Bullets don’t go bad, but the ones I don’t like I don’t keep around, I use them up. I tend to curate “good stuff”.
Brass doesn’t go bad, but it does age. I use a lot at a time and then scrap it.

It sucks to pull everything out to stack new in the back, especially bullets, but so far I haven’t found any of the collating racks like the soda and soup cans have.

It would be neat to go through so much that I needed a measuring bin like the Co-Op has for bulk stock. Just pour the new bullets in the top of the little silo and dispense 200 grain SWC goodness at the bottom!
A giant powder measure, for bullets!


I’ve been reassessing my storage as well. Chipped up the tile floors, framed in a closet, moved all my reloading things from the basement at my father’s. Still not enough room…

My new room, excuse me, closet, is even smaller than my other closet. (But it does have a better adjoining room. No water softeners or condensing lines. A rifle fits!) So I’ve been contemplating other areas. Luckily I like water resistant storage bins that stack, four gallon fruit salad buckets, so I don’t have to spend a bunch on steel racks yet. So all my brass sits unceremoniously in the garage against the wall, like so much paint.
But brass is easy to clean and inspect, so it’s the only thing not inside. I don’t mind it’s age, just it’s cycles, and try to keep them organized by lot that way.
Everything else is by age. Powder will always have the “New Hotness” I want to try, so I use it up.

Bullets and brass don't matter much to me, I just use what I have. An example is my 45 Colt brass. I only have about 100 pieces so it gets recycled every time I load it. Bullets depend on what I'm loading like 230gr vs. 185gr.

I do try to rotate my primers by stacking new purchases below existing stock, but that doesn't always happen either.

Powder is a first in first out based on type.

chris

Powder is always FIFO (my brain makes me write the manufacture date AND the purchase date on the front in big numbers - just in case there is an exception to the rule), but projectiles are more specific. Like CQB45ACP says, I tend to curate the projectiles (and sometimes the brass sorted by head stamp) depending on the round I am loading. I definitely curate the primers based on the round.

I'd like to think of it from an analytical point of view which in my mind say powder/primers FIFO but I don't even come close to doing that.

I use whatever powder I want to use.

Most of my new powders are just that; new to the market and something I bought to try so the older stuff sits.

Last time I bought primers was in '09, and I bought a lot of them.

I remember going with my wife for a sonogram before my daughter was born telling her "I bought enough primers that I won't have to buy anymore" (of course I will if I ever see, what I consider to be reasonable prices again)

My daughter is 13 years old now and I still have plenty of primers.

Russian Wolf primers when they were $13/1k.

I already had huge stash of Winchester, CCI and Federal but I've been using the Wolf since I bought them and letting the others sit.

Brass and bullets I don't think I've given any thought to.

I don't really worry about it. I grab what I want to load that day.
Like my Bullseye, it's probably over 40 yrs old but I won't hesitate to use it if I were to load some 38 spl Wadcutters, as long as it looks and smells good.
Most of the time though I am using out of 8 lb jugs and the one pounders are the more specialty powders so they do sit around without being used.

Um I find powder at the store older than the stuff I have at home. There were two bottles of n160 on the shelf marke 06/2012. With that being the senerio I just buy it and use it. Now this go around of feast when powder is back in the 30 dollar range I'll need to buy multiple houses to be in storage compliance

Thie acronyms are actually funny to me.

When I was working at a salvage yard, we used the FISH inventory system . First in, still here...
Owner thought he was running a museum rather than a place to sell things. Hard to make a living working on commission.

As with others, powder, and usually primers, are FIFO. Everything else is as needed.

Hooda Thunkit said:

Owner thought he was running a museum rather than a place to sell things. Hard to make a living working on commission.

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Some people have a hard time letting go of things. I have a 6 month rule that I later changed to a 3 month rule. If it lays around here for 3 months and doesn't get touched, unless its a machine part of some sort that I can use, it goes down the highway.
Wait until I retire, this place will get a cleansing. I am saving some things like all my Lake Erie fishing gear, to sell on Ebay when I retire. All my GLS reels, and my hang boxes with trolling lures and so on.

I'm all over the map. I tend to do a lot of casual plinking and offhand practice. In this case it is "Random stuff", often of unkown age. The random stuff pile often consists of moth eaten bullet boxes or discolored plastic bags marked with sharpie, dead end experimental bullets, range or tired brass and the occasional cardboard or metal powder can or partial modern can I didn't wish to continue using for first line ammo and is sourced from friends who bring me "old reloading stuff" or things I end up with from sales or auction lots. This is always a first grab, and in the case of powder and primers I try to use the oldest by my estimation first. Bullets from the random stuff pile are used as appropriate for my use at the time. I try to get enough of similar weight and style bullet at once to make a run of ammo of similar performance.

For first line components, I try to follow the FIFO motto with powder and primers. Brass and bullets are all over the map, but if a specific bullet or lot of brass falls out of favor or becomes untrustworthy with the occasional neck split in the case of brass or suspected oxidation between jacket and core or just too small a lot of bullets to make up a run anymore, it is transferred to the random stuff pile and marked as single use.

These component shortages have been a mixed blessing for my organization. My random stuff pile has dwindeled to a single Commie ammo crate only half full. I now have a large supply of stupid 1lb cans of first line powders, including a substitute standard for the M1 pending testing. The 1lb cans tend to get a boost to the front of the line as I hate keeping a lot of them around and cluttering up my room.

tightgroup tiger said:

Some people have a hard time letting go of things. I have a 6 month rule that I later changed to a 3 month rule. If it lays around here for 3 months and doesn't get touched, unless its a machine part of some sort that I can use, it goes down the highway.
Wait until I retire, this place will get a cleansing. I am saving some things like all my Lake Erie fishing gear, to sell on Ebay when I retire. All my GLS reels, and my hang boxes with trolling lures and so on.

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That’s what I did when I retired…sold lots of stuff on eBay. Old car parts & old tools mostly. Even developed semi-regular customers like a guy in Sweden who’d buy flat rate boxes of fasteners used on mid-60s vintage corvettes & other GM cars. He’d pay more in value added taxes & shipping than for the parts but as he said, “it was treasure.”

I stopped before I got around to selling my grandfather’s machinist tools now it’s too late because eBay has made payment system unacceptable to me. How am I going to get rid of unused reloading stuff?

Thought I was a dunce for a bit, but I figgered it out. I'm not big on abbreviations. FiFo.

Powder and primers, I use the oldest first. I write the purchase date on powder and primers when I buy them. On powder its on the front of the can or jug. On primers its on the inside of the front flap. Just the month and year. I also put an "O" on the cap of any powder container thats been opened. Brass and bullets, I don't care about their age.

Powder is FIFO for each type. Everything else is whichever I grab in no particular order.

BTW, you left out LIFO and LILO.

Demi-human said:

Brass doesn’t go bad, but it does age

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Please explain? Everything ages, including me. That's not necessarily a bad thing.
POINT # 2: I have two cans of powder recently acquired. One is IMR plastic container with a metal top of 4350 with 3 ounces left and the other is DuPont 4064 which is 3/4 of a 1 pound can. Assuming both can be used relatively soon, which should be loaded first to prevent it from going bad? There are no signs of deterioration in either can.

Primers are FIFO
Powders are mostly 1 container. Enough powder to store, just in the variety. If it is a favorite or high use powder, I get a larger size (4# or 8#). When a 1# gets to 3-4 oz, I get another.
Nothing else matters. Brass is all mixed together.

GeoDudeFlorida said:

Well, yes and no. They’re all just different acronyms to describe either stacking or queuing. A traffic light is a queue - LILO is also queuing, like FIFO - and a cord of firewood is a stack - LIFO is also stacking, like FILO. The option I didn’t list directly is random access. That’s covered by “Other.”

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And I thought filo was the dough used in Greek pastries.

FIFO
Powder is dated with a label maker and I just shelve it.
Primers go in a stack with the newest being on the bottom in my cabinet.
I do date my brass as to when I processed it, what I did, and use the oldest first even though it doesnt matter because brass doesnt go bad.
Bullets? I just use them as needed. Only time I worry about bullets is when I hurt my credit card buying more.

Most all reloading stuff is FIFO with some exceptions. I try to keep one or two boxes of a particular bullet on hand at all times as it works well in a particular firearm. Lately some are unobtainum or discontinued. Those I save to use with certain loads that are tried and true. Mostly for hunting use such as Winchester Silver tips or Cor Loct bullets. Those are put back and newer more available bullets are used and replaced first.

Powder/primers it's FIFO for sure
Bullets, eh dosn't really matter for jacketed but the commercial cast I've bought I re-upped when I was getting low and used up what was left before breaking into the new box since they're different batches. This is just for consistency and doesn't really matter for expiration obviously. This came in to play in a semi-major way when I got another box of SNS 45-70 405gr cast coated. The new box I checked out and found that batch must have come from a different mould than the previous batch because they were slightly longer, 1.009" vs. 1.018" average. Made a difference in the seating stem depth since I use a flat nose seater.

For brass I FILO. I have an amount of "active" brass that's in rotation of getting fired, cleaned and loaded that will remain until they fail for whatever reason then I'll break out new brass from the stash of Starline boxes I have.

I personally think this is a “loaded” question. Mostly I’m with the FIFO crowd, but not always…

With powder, each container is marked with the date of purchase, when opened it is marked with the date of first use. Always use the oldest container first. Primers-newest goes to the back of the stack. So FIFO for both.