Cartridge Rotation and use

[hdwhit]

It is entirely up to you. You can sit on 5,000 rounds of brass and only reload 1,000 at a time and end up with cancer in 18 months (as happened to me), so to that you're leaving components behind or else leave behind rounds only your heirs will shoot.

 

[gifbohane]

whit -

So sorry to hear that.. but you are right. When it is late in the fourth quarter you just don't know!

 

[Toprudder]

Sorry to hear that, @hdwhit .

Components are easier to sell than hand loaded ammo. That is one reason why I don’t typically load up more than 500 rounds of anything at one time.

 

[Chuck R.]

I have close to 3000 223R in rotation. Once shot go into the to process bucket. Continue shooting on the others. Once I get all the way through I start the second round. I anneal every cycle, I have 8 reloads on a smaller group of 1000, that I use for testing and my higher accuracy loads. These are all LC brass. Annealing will greatly extend your brass life provide you don't over size moving the shoulder back too far.

It all works just need to keep up where your brass is at. Best to order components in bulk for best pricing. Bullets in 6k+, Primers in 10K+. Powder in 16-32 lbs lots.

Same method I use for my bulk .223/5.56 brass. Then there's a portion that get's lost in a match or class. Come Feb when hunting season's over and the weather's crappy I start processing .223 brass all over again.

 

[BBarn]

I'd wear them out a thousand at a time. That could allow me to sell some of the once fired in the future for whatever reason.

 

[ms6852]

I personally don't see a disadvantage. I reload the same brass over and over until something spits and if it's at the neck it than get recycled to 300 blackout. I have several hundred brass cartridges that are cleaned and stored in a water tight storage bin in the reloading room and the 5 gallon buckets are out in the shed for when ever I need to replenish.

 

[mmb617]

I don't think there's a right or wrong answer to your question, everybody has their own methods that they prefer but that doesn't make other ways wrong. I have a couple thousand pieces of .223 brass and I don't keep track of how many times they've been reloaded but I'm sure it's more than a half dozen times for at least some of them. I do anneal every cycle which helps. I roughly follow the FIFO philosophy as I have one ammo box I use while filling the other and when my range box empties I switch them. So far this year I've reloaded 4749 rounds of .223 on my single stage press and have sent about half of them down range. I like having a good stockpile of both loaded ammo and components.