Marking Cases

[DragonFire]

I'm taking a handgun course this week, and the instructor said we'd stand a better chance of recovery most of our cases if we marked them. He didn't say how or where.

I have a can of red rusto'leum laying around. Would it hurt the primers if I dabbed a bit of paint across the back of the cases?

Any better suggestions?

 

[Justin]

I've seen people mark the base of the case using just a marker. Usually with a single line, an x, or some other simple design.

 

[Car Knocker]

Lots of folks use colored permanent markers to make a stripe or two across the head of the case. Combinations of colors are an option. Works much faster than dabbing paint on each case.

 

[Father Knows Best]

Is it really worth the effort? Unless you're shooting bullseye pistol (which I doubt you are), it shouldn't matter whether you get your exact cases back. The effort of marking and sorting them by mark is more than they're worth.

Incidentally, I often mark the bottoms of some of my revolver cases, but it's not so I know which ones are mine. I put a black stripe across them with a sharpie. The reason is that I am a cowboy shooter and often load black powder. The black stripe on the bottom of a case tells me it is loaded with black powder instead of smokeless.

 

[thunder]

I've done it a couple times before, not for any real reason. Just got bored before one saturday I guess. It takes seconds just to swipe a big marker up and down the rows of cartridges when they're in the case. I also don't see the reason behind it, but it's easy nonetheless.

 

[Pilgrim]

Some courses are run too fast to permit brass recovery. Consequently, I plan on not getting it back, and if I take my own reloads I use reloads loaded in my oldest brass.

Pilgrim

 

[ACP230]

I have marked my brass in the past, usually when heading for a Bullseye or PPC-type match. I recently found a box of reloads, made for competition, that had an X in brown marker across the head of the case. Other folks were using brown or red marker then, so brown was a good choice.

I'm very casual about counting the number of reloads, but do prefer to use my own brass, if I can't glom onto someone else's once-fired stuff.

It can be a courtesy to other shooters who count reloads carefully to mark brass. It makes sorting out a pile left after a match stage go more quickly too.