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9mm Brass Question..(again)

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Lee Q. Loader

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I didn't want to hijack the recent thread on 9mm brass to ask this question:

In the above mentioned thread a few of you have mentioned a dislike of .FC. and Blazer brass.
Those 2 make up about 70% of my current inventory. I really like both of them.
Am I missing something? Is there something specific I should be looking for with those 2 headstamps?
I'm pretty new to loading 9mm so I want to be extra careful.
 
Lee Q. Loader said:
I didn't want to hijack the recent thread on 9mm brass to ask this question:

In the above mentioned thread a few of you have mentioned a dislike of .FC. and Blazer brass.
Those 2 make up about 70% of my current inventory. I really like both of them.
Am I missing something? Is there something specific I should be looking for with those 2 headstamps?
I'm pretty new to loading 9mm so I want to be extra careful.
Click to expand...

I don’t think so
As said
Load what you have and shoot them

Now if you’re doing precision shooting it might make sense to sort them out and pick one type of brass. Otherwise just use safe practices and don’t do anything dumb and yiu should be fine.
 
I cull my 9mm brass, there are only about 4 or 5 headstamps I keep... Federal is one of them. I know they get a bad rap, but I've never had a problem with FC brass in anything I load, rifle or pistol. Blazer is CCI/Speer... if there is a shortcoming with Blazer (brass not aluminum...) cases, I'd like to know what it is.
 
I have found that the two brands in question do not give me the super-tight "coke bottle" neck tension that some other head stamps give me.

Which is fine.

I do like those really tight cases when loading jacketed bullets, but when dealing with cast, or even swaged bullets (this is 90% of my 9mm reloading these days) I prefer the slight reduction in neck tension/wall thickness found in Blazer and FC brass. Lead bullets are of a larger diameter and more prone to damage.
 
I don't have any issue with them, as a matter of fact, I used some sorted by weight/length Blazer for a recent 9MM test.

I have a bigger "test" batch of .FC. sorted by weight/length.

higgite said:
They are garbage. Send them all to me for proper disposal. You're welcome. ;)
Click to expand...
Yep.
 
Lee Q. Loader said:
I didn't want to hijack the recent thread on 9mm brass to ask this question:

In the above mentioned thread a few of you have mentioned a dislike of .FC. and Blazer brass.
Those 2 make up about 70% of my current inventory. I really like both of them.
Am I missing something? Is there something specific I should be looking for with those 2 headstamps?
I'm pretty new to loading 9mm so I want to be extra careful.
Click to expand...
I'm not sure who said that I but I disagree. Federal brass has always been high quality across the board. Blazer brass is CCI brass is Speer brass, all good stuff.

If you have an lot I also volunteer to take some off your hands, I'm good like that! :thumbup:
 
Most opinion on handgun brass are just that, anecdotal opinions, There is nothing wrong with those brands.
 
I have no problem with either of them either. They may be a .001" thinner than some of the other brands but it never seemed to affect anything I do.
I don't mind them at all. I always have coveted my Winchester brass but I certainly don't worry about using Federal or Blaser brass either one.
If I had to cut all my .fc. brass I would loose half my inventory of 9mm.
 
I sort my brass by headstamp to cull out the ones that I KNOW are bad and group the rest in bins by headstamp.
Loading in batches of 100 (because of primers) sometimes you will notice that primers insert easier in some brass than others.
Other than that, I don't see much difference, but I like to keep my batches uniform and it really isn't too much trouble to sort by headstamp since you are already culling out the bad ones.
 
On some CCI Blazer and F-C brass there is a dot before and after the brand name, I'm curious if there is any significance with that?
 
I never had a problem loading any of those either. I just inspect for the ones with the internal step or made of steel, those I recycle rather than reload. I inspect them all anyway so sorting by head stamp is no additional bother. The additional dot is usually a factory production designation. Same as Win, WCC, WIN, different loading lines /locations by same company.
 
I'll put it this way.....

if you reach into one of my ammo cans & grab a great big handful:

P2190058.jpg

You're gonna come up with this kind of random:

P2190055.jpg

45+ unique HS & probably a bunch more in there. If I were ultra picky or thought sorting by HS was a good idea, Id have a couple 100 round boxes & just load 9mm continually :)


Here are 5 flavors of FC brass - all living in perfect harmony. If I were discarding perfectly fine brass "cuz hard" - esp early on when I had none & was scrounging - I'd be filling fewer 30 cal cans today. IF someone is trading you 9mm brass - you can bet a bunch of it will be this unless otherwise specified :) I was glad to get it regardless. Same for WCC or other crimped - like .223, deal with & move on.

P2190057.jpg

Unless berdan primed, steel, aluminum, or damaged, the only thing I otherwise cull is this. I mentioned in other thread there is a reason, but I don't remember what it is. Early on, it gave me trouble so I said "trash it all". Bad pic, but HS looks like nny-87. Obviously this one is fine - been loaded & shot many times, but there are very, very few others that HS in my mix.

P2190056.jpg

I think your chance is pretty slim of finding brass cased, boxer primed, good condition 9mm brass in the wild that is just plain unusable.... But you might be a lot pickier than I am. Not saying EVERY brand out there is just fine, but completely unusable or should be trashed on sight is very small amount.

Not saying I disagree with others that 9mm is so plentiful it's no big deal to just discard vs spend any extra processing time. But along that line of thought, @ 14¢ round for basic commercial FMJ, why load it all? I think I save $30/case loading vs buying general FMJ training 9mm - and that's buying components in bulk, scrounging to get lowest cost/round. To me, if I'm going to bother loading 9mm, its to do something productive with my time so if processing some brass is part of that, don't really care. When all I had was LCT press, it often was simply not worth the $30 vs the time it took to take 1k from range pickup to finished rounds.

If you are really worried about it, just buy a case of commercial Win white box, UMC, S&B, PPU, etc. Those 1,000 pieces of brass will last an extremely long time. Cost would be the same or less than buying 1k mixed 9mm brass & components to do just 1k
 
joneb said:
On some CCI Blazer and F-C brass there is a dot before and after the brand name, I'm curious if there is any significance with that?
Click to expand...

I was wondering the same thing. The difference between FC and .FC. is ………..I also have some brass head stamped in "Chinese" or "arab" symbols. The Head stamp chart does not address these languages.
 
CMV said:
if you reach into one of my ammo cans & grab a great big handful:
Click to expand...
You’re such a nice person to offer!!! When can I come over? Can I use your guns too? Seriously, nice pics of reloads!

Other forums indicate the .fc. and blazer is extruded in the Idaho plant, where the FC is drawn in the Mn. plant. I’ve not had any problems that I know of reloading either. @bds has done a lot of work characterizing brass if that’s important to you. I give him a ton of credit for all that work.

9mmepiphany said:
I'd bet that at least one of those is actually the Browning Stag
Click to expand...
I’ve seen these as well, and thought at first it was some middle eastern writing, but if you look carefully there are the stag horns from Browning. The cases were also blackened, maybe anodized or treated, and they retained most of it through the SS tumbling too. They reloaded just fine in the Heinz mix.
 
joneb said:
On some CCI Blazer and F-C brass there is a dot before and after the brand name, I'm curious if there is any significance with that?
Click to expand...
Since they look different, the dot FC looks like Blazer the way the head is cupped, and the plain FC is flat, I would assume so.
 
CMV said:
if you reach into one of my ammo cans & grab a great big handful:...................You're gonna come up with this kind of random:
Click to expand...
That used to be like my 9MM, but the last time I scrapped a batch of 9MM brass I decided to sort out and use one headstamp. I do beilieve it helps just a little when shooting for accuracy or just tough shots in general, like my 16" plate at 108 yards, but for general plinking/blasting one would never notice a difference, and I can't really prove the difference in sorting vs it just seems like they are a bit more consistent. Maybe only a few really bad brass mixed in, who knows, cause with the batch I scrapped i didn't sort anything at all.
 
Walkalong said:
That used to be like my 9MM, but the last time I scrapped a batch of 9MM brass I decided to sort out and use one headstamp. I do beilieve it helps just a little when shooting for accuracy or just tough shots in general, like my 16" plate at 108 yards, but for general plinking/blasting one would never notice a difference, and I can't really prove the difference in sorting vs it just seems like they are a bit more consistent. Maybe only a few really bad brass mixed in, who knows, cause with the batch I scrapped i didn't sort anything at all.
Click to expand...

Most definitely....depends on what kind of shooting you're doing with the ammo - we all have different needs & goals which is easy to forget. I do load a small amount for accuracy and those get > 6.5¢ bullets, name brand primers, and sorted HS brass.

I'm exact opposite with .308WIN - I don't think I've ever loaded a FMJ there :) I take great care and put precision above cost, speed, ease of processing, etc. Others are loading up 147gr pulls in large volumes.....
 
I was resizing some Blazer 9x19 50ct and five of the cases were noticeably easier to resize so I kept them separate from the others. For one of my test loads I loaded up ten rounds and loaded the five easy to size cases with the same charge, here are results
Out of ten I shot seven over the chrono,
Firearm, Sig P 938
CCI 500
5.1gr of BE-86
RMR 124gr tcfp
col 1.085
H= 1036
L= 1020
AV= 1027
ES= 16
SD= 6
# of shots = 7
Now the results for five, there was noticeably less resistance when seating the bullet,
same load,
H= 1031
L= 1007
AV= 1018
ES=24
SD=11
# of shots = 5
 
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