Picking up range brass

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is there really that much lead on a spent shell casing?
I tumble in my garage now, but never did worry much about it at the range, i do not eat or drink with dirty hands as thats the fastest way to contaminate yourself.
 
You could bait a trap with fired 45 acp cases and catch me three times a week. Seems I always come back from the range with more than I carried in the gate.
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:evil:


Yup, me too. As a matter of fact, right after I post my question in this forum, I'm off to the range to do just that. (Well, I'm headed into town anyway...)

Herk 30, you could always send the .45ACP, .38 Spl. and .223 to entropy, c/o THR.....:p

If there's any left after the brass rats that already posted are done.....:(



At the range my Dad shoots at, it's like your range, Herk. Unfortunately, last time I went shooting there, he wanted to leave 5 minutes after I started picking brass, got all of mine and about 50 more .45ACP. :fire:
 
is there really that much lead on a spent shell casing?
I tumble in my garage now, but never did worry much about it at the range, i do not eat or drink with dirty hands as thats the fastest way to contaminate yourself.
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I'd be more concerned about dust that gets kicked up and inhaled than absorbed through the skin. Whatever results from combustion of primers, powder, and the base of a bullet, I don't want to breathe it more than I have to. Tumblers are often the "hot spot" for lead contamination in a shooter/reloader's home.

I always keep away from the dust in my tumbler.
 
Thanks for all the help and tips guys. I picked up more today at lunch and it's just never ending. I plan to post pictures when I get it all picked up. I'm going to bring a rake, shovel and some sort of a sifting screen to speed the process up before someone sees what I'm up to and helps themselves also :evil:

One last question for now though, are the aluminum and nickel plated casings ok for reloading or are they pretty much junk? I think of them are 40 and 45's. I think I read somewhere that the nickel cases are too hard of material to trim and resize.
 
Nickle plated cases are OK to reload, though some shun them out of ignorance. I don't know of any way to reload aluminum cases, though the 40 and some 9mm Blazers are boxer primed. I just deprime them and am saving them for recycling. Technically, steel Boxer primed cases are reloadable also, I did some 9mm Russian ones once as an experiment. They worked OK, but I suspect one reload would be all one could expect. I just left them after I fired the reloads.
 
Another thing I thought I read somewhere was that some of the .223 or 5.56 rounds have a different primer seat or something that needs to be addressed? It seemed like most of the stuff up there was marked LC, which I assume is Lake City. Any pointers on what to look for on this or am I way off?
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Berdan primers and steel cases seem to go together, as in the low-budget Russian stuff (Wolf). Until now (Entropy's most recent post) I had thought steel cases were useless except as scrap. Then, too, until I did some Googling about it, I thought anything with Berdan primers couldn't be decapped. I love it when I learn something new, however esoteric it might be. :p


If I end up using steel .223 for a couple of courses I'm hoping to take in April, I might put a donut magnet in my shooting box so I can pick up my empties afterward, and save someone else from having to sort "the wheat from the chaff." I'll find some way to recycle 'em.
If I can afford brass .223, those empties will go with me, too, unless the range has some rule about it.
 
you ever try the water trick with berdan primers. pour some water in the case. then use (depending on size of the case) a rod tapered helps but a rod that is almost the same size as the case. As you tap the rod in the pressure of the rod pushing the water will pop the primer out.
 
Now, see, I've already learned something new today, and I didn't break anything in the process. :D
Thanks, Scrat.
 
I was looking through Midway's mailed flyer yesterday afternoon. They have a 3-bin sorter for pistol - as I recall, it sorted .45, .40, and 9mm. Price wasn't bad...especially if you consider the time it'll save if you have a bunch of pistol ammo to sort - and apparantly you do! The 9mm will catch some odd stuff, probably - .380, for example, since that will fall through the .40 gap - but it'll help!

Q
 
If its a range used exclusively by cops and military, you are virtually guaranteed that everything they are shooting is new factory ammo. I'd be fine with picking that up. Especially if the primer crimp is still on the rifle cases.

At a public range, I'd be a bit more worried about someone leaving many-times-fired cases.
 
The way I look at it, most who leave brass at the range aren't reloaders, so there is a fairly good chance it is once fired. Don't let this "rule" stop you from doing a through inspection of each case though.

sorry ny32182, if I was paying attention, I would have read all the posts and not re-written what you said in the first place.
 
Nickel cases are fine to reload. If you don't want them, I'll take them.

Do not reload aluminum. A magnet will pick up the steel cases.
 
I haven't seen this one yet...

Beware of brass fired in a Glock!

Most importantly, beware of .40S&W fired in a Glock.

It is easy to tell if brass has been fired in a Glock because Glocks do not have firing pins, they have "Strikers".
Instead of a little round indentation on the primer, you will see a rectangular strike mark.
Also, .40S&W fired out of Glocks tend to have a "pregnant guppy" look to them, where the base of the case has a bulge on the side. This is caused by Glocks unsupported chamber.

Since Glocks have unsupported chambers you will have to full-length resize this brass, and this could potentially cause a weak spot in the case where a rupture might occur.

I'm sure you noticed that I wrote "could", potentially", & "might" - it's your gun, hands, face, and eyes, so feel free to take any risk you please, but you can't say that nobody ever warned you.
 
Beware of brass fired in a Glock!
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Another internet myth.

It is easy to tell if brass has been fired in a Glock because Glocks do not have firing pins, they have "Strikers".
Instead of a little round indentation on the primer, you will see a rectangular strike mark.
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Uh huh. My Taurus 24/7 is striker fired and leaves no such mark. The Glock primer mark is from the shape of the hole the firing pin passes through.

Since Glocks have unsupported chambers you will have to full-length resize this brass, and this could potentially cause a weak spot in the case where a rupture might occur.
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You don't full-length resize ALL of your semi-auto pistol brass? Glock chamber support varies by caliber and barrel. Other manufacturers have chambers in the same condition as Glock.
 
The M1911 also has an unsupported chamber, and I routinely reload rounds from mine, and I just reloaded some cases fired from my G21 today. I found nothing wrong with that brass at all, though since the chambers are looser, I might expect shorter case life.


FYI, Sig Sauers leave identical "striker" marks, despite having hammers. It's as Strat 81 says, from the firing pin hole.
 
Dumpster Baby - I have close to that much already in about an hours worth of picking up. I have about 1/4 of a 55 gallon barrell so far. I'm sure some will be junk, but that's money too. I was hoping to really hit it tomorrow but we're expecting an inch of snow plus rain.

ny32182 - It's almost exlusively used by the local pd, which means I am going to have a ton of pistol brass to sell after I get it all cleaned and sorted.

I was wondering what that odd firing pin mark was all about. Must be the glock owners.

Another thing I was wondering is how bent out of shape can a case neck be before it's junk? There's a few that look like they've been stepped on. Some lightly, some I know have to be junk.
 
As long as it is reasonably clean it reloads just fine. As far as crushed necks, if it is a common case like .40 or 9mm just toss it if it's even a question. If it is a big pistol magnum or something, as long as there is no "kink" in the brass, it's just a deformed or ovaled mouth, as long as you can get it into the die it will likely be OK, but anything like that I individually look over with a loup before I reload, checking for cracks.
 
i just rescued a couple hundred once fired 5.56 ceases from the trash can at my range, and another hundred or two from the mud. let soak in hot water for 5 minutes, then shake them in a strainer. comes out as clean as they left the firearm, then tumble and load as desired...
 
Sell it in the classified section and craigslist. It'll sell, trust me, I've bought a bunch this way and these are the first two places I look.

jeepmor
 
??

Sell it in the classified section and craigslist. It'll sell, trust me, I've bought a bunch this way and these are the first two places I look.

jeepmor
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jeepmor is there a trick to using craigslist? I went there after hearing about about it and was so confused. I couldn't even figure out how to find brass or anything reloading for that matter!
 
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