yhtomit
Member
At the cautious advice of others on this forum (http://thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=293492), I tossed today much of the brass that I've collected at the nearby state-funded shooting range, because some small percentage of it I'd gotten from the trash barrels there, and may have been affected by the fires that have been lit in those same barrels. I didn't know until reading some posts here on THR that such heating can be bad even in small doses, and therefore didn't segregate that brass as "recycle only, don't reload."
So, something between 600 and 800 .40S&W cases are now in the recycle bin, as well as many (a few hundred) 9mm cases where I'm not absolutely sure that it was my own ammo. Luckily enough, I've never found any .45ACP in the trash bins, so I didn't have to toss any of that. Luckily, I'd also kept as a separate batch some brass that a fellow reader here was nice enough to send to me, and as for rifle calibers, the rifle range nearby doesn't even seem to have a trash barrel at all, and I know I haven't gotten any from it. It feels like a big waste to toss something near a thousand cases into the recycle pile to cull perhaps a few dozen cases (of which most or perhaps all were probably perfectly safe and tossed in after the fire had been cool for hours or days), but now I'm glad to have done so -- don't want to find out the hard way that I've created an unsafe reload.
Went back to the same range this afternoon, and as a sort of karmic reward, found the ground well seeded with bright, shiny just-fired cases there for my scavenging bucket; those will be put into bags noted with the date of collection.
Lesson: avoid bad brass! Had I known about the problem with brass heated too much, I would never have grabbed the cases in the barrels -- again, most of which were obviously tossed in after the fire, but ended up in the same bucket as the few that were likely in there when it was lit.
timothy
EDIT: Just found another box of brass, scavenged from the same range, which might in fact have contained every single one of the possibly-in-the-fire cases. Tossed 'em. This time it felt better -- when brass hits $10/lb, I'll probably be especially glad to have done this one-man pre-emptive voluntary product recall
So, something between 600 and 800 .40S&W cases are now in the recycle bin, as well as many (a few hundred) 9mm cases where I'm not absolutely sure that it was my own ammo. Luckily enough, I've never found any .45ACP in the trash bins, so I didn't have to toss any of that. Luckily, I'd also kept as a separate batch some brass that a fellow reader here was nice enough to send to me, and as for rifle calibers, the rifle range nearby doesn't even seem to have a trash barrel at all, and I know I haven't gotten any from it. It feels like a big waste to toss something near a thousand cases into the recycle pile to cull perhaps a few dozen cases (of which most or perhaps all were probably perfectly safe and tossed in after the fire had been cool for hours or days), but now I'm glad to have done so -- don't want to find out the hard way that I've created an unsafe reload.
Went back to the same range this afternoon, and as a sort of karmic reward, found the ground well seeded with bright, shiny just-fired cases there for my scavenging bucket; those will be put into bags noted with the date of collection.
Lesson: avoid bad brass! Had I known about the problem with brass heated too much, I would never have grabbed the cases in the barrels -- again, most of which were obviously tossed in after the fire, but ended up in the same bucket as the few that were likely in there when it was lit.
timothy
EDIT: Just found another box of brass, scavenged from the same range, which might in fact have contained every single one of the possibly-in-the-fire cases. Tossed 'em. This time it felt better -- when brass hits $10/lb, I'll probably be especially glad to have done this one-man pre-emptive voluntary product recall
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