Does it matter if you seprate brass by maf?

[chris93555]

I started reloading and was wondering if it makes a different to separate and load the same manufacturer of brass? ie, military to non, or same brands together FC with FC, Rem with Rem. I load the following caliber, 9mm, 40SW, 38 sp., 357 mag, 45LC .223, .243, and 308

 

[ColtPythonElite]

I don't separate handgun brass at all....Generally, all of my rifle brass is one brand, so it doesn't need separating. If it were mixed, I'd only separate if if chasing extreme accuracy.

 

[Fishslayer]

I sort my handgun brass by headstamp. Different manufacturers use different brass thickness.

Now that we have so much SPP .45ACP brass showing up I suspect more will be doing so.

Most people who reload don't sort handgun brass. It's just my own OCD.

 

[Lothar Allen]

I do. All of my shooting is for bullseye though. For any other type of pistol shooting I wouldn't bother. Fully prep your pistol brass (deprime, flash holes/pockets) and then take a random sample of statistical significance. You will likely be surprised at your standard deviation and extreme spread in case weights (weigh to the tenth). Since you have performed the case prep prior to this analysis you are given a more useful indicator of case thickness. I believe you will see a tighter SD and ES with sorted headstamps. I certainly don't do this for loading ammunition, but did this to determine if there was value in the sorting process. Obviously you must be much more critical of your brass prep and grading for rifle, but certain processes add value for pistol as well (at least theoretically). This is all assuming you are shooting a match grade pistol to begin with. Now if Lapua would just make 45acp brass...

 

[FROGO207]

As a rule I do not do anything with handgun brass other than primer size in 45 ACP and 500S&W. I initially will look at water volume of each type of rifle brass and sort if there is a large variation. I do with commercial and military in 223 but other sizes mostly not. That said, I rarely load to max and any variations would be in the safe zone in my reloaded ammo. This approach has worked well for me. YMMV

 

[swiftak]

Seperate rifle brass by brand. Handgun brass is all mixed.

 

[Craigman]

at the very least, you should separate commercial rifle brass from military brass when working up loads.

 

[glenns]

I reload 45 ACP, 40S&W, 9mm and 38 spl. I pick up some brass from the range. I do not sort them before reloading except for those pesky 45's that use small primers.

 

[gamestalker]

Most of the time I separate by head stamp, but most important to me is trim length. Although it is really time consuming to do, I will spend a lot of time trimming all my brass to the same length, and then bagging it up according to head stamp.

If your wanting to increase over all consistency, sorting and trimmimg makes that difference.