Brass longevity poll

Are you asking about rifle or pistol brass? It does make a difference.

Fred

So does the caliber....

...and, it makes a difference for what caliber of (pistol) brass, too, AFAICT.

Jim H.

R-P has pretty good 357mag brass. I have 5X full house loads on 20 of them and still no bad signs. The ones loaded easy may have 15X or so on them and they also look good.

LC in 5.56; WCC and TZZ in .45ACP. For commercial, I usually get the most life out of W-W.

I voted Winchester, although I really can't say that it's any longer lived than the others listed. It is because I have more Winchester brass.

I do not shoot a lot of max loads out of any of my firearms. Running MAX loads or above, is just a waste of powder, primer and BRASS!

It is true that some very accurate loads are MAX, but this is not the norm. The target shooter may have to run a MAX load in his tight spec chambered rifle, but the tight specs reduce the stretching in the brass which gives LONGER LIFE than a SAAMI spec chambers.

I have some 22 Hornet Winchester brass that has had up to and over 10 reloadings at very moderate charges of several different powders. These loading produce accuracy in the
< 1" @100yd range. Loadings in .308 Winchester with Winchester brass have the same statistics.

I will challange the Winchester 22 Hornet brass life with the recent purchase of a 100 Remington nickle plated 22 Hornet cases and some Barnes 36 gr HPFB Grenades and a case full( which happens to be 13 grs) of Hodgdons Lil'Gun, where as the former loading was 40gr VMAX and 12.5gr of the LG stuffed into a Winchester case.

Have 40 rounds of Hornady .223 brass that are on their 9th reload with no bad signs.

Knowing how to adjust your sizing die can mean more as far as the life of brass than can the brand of brass.

Jimmy K

I voted Winchester.

I've got 5 Lake City cases 2001 in .223 that have now been reloaded over 60 times. They have only been neck sized and trimed as necessary.

I have had very good results from Prvi Partizan brass from my 22-250 and 6.5x55. In all fairness though...the 6.5s are loaded very mildly.

Other than the occasional split .38 special-.357 brass I don't see any problem with any big name brass as far as case life. The only problems I have found is loose primer pockets in AP brass(I don't know who makes them and I don't load them hot), and quite a few Remington nickle plated cases for my .38 super would flake the plating off in the first 2-3 loadings.

I had a few rounds fail to chamber fully and every time I would find a piece of plating that had worked it's way into the front of the chamber, not letting the round fully chamber. After that I went thru about 700 cases of mixed brass and discarded the flaking cases. That was about 40 cases ALL of them were Remington.

I shoot about 480 rounds a month in weekly matches using mixed brass and have never had that problem again. So I assume it was a bad batch of brass.

In my auto pistols, I usually lose it before it fails.