Should I use this brass?

[slowr1der]

A friend gave me a bunch of old brass, powder, and some bullets he had laying around since he no longer re loads and hasn't in quite a while. Most of the brass looked decent after tumbling, but a few had really deep cuts in the necks. I tossed those. The rest looked fine so I went on to resize. During resizing about 30-40% of them had the necks split on them. The rest looked fine after resizing. Is it safe to use the rest, or should I just toss them all and just use the rest of the stuff he gave me? It's not worth blowing up the gun or anything else for a few pieces of brass if they aren't safe to use, but if they are safe, I'd just assume load them up. It just worries me that the case split on soo many of them.

 

[GP100man]

Without seeing em & age of em , I`d toss em .

But being the scrounger I am if they did`nt slit when flared I`d load em .

I`ve split cases on straight walled revolver ammo with out dire consicinsous

Take & cut on in 1/2 the long way if there old ballon head cases , can em all !!

 

[rcmodel]

I would reload the ones that didn't neck split during sizing & expanding.
You can get at least one more firing out of them that didn't split when you sized them.

A split neck during firing is of no safety concern, although you won't win any 1,000 yard matches with them.

rc

 

[472x1A/B]

As rcmodel says not that much of an issue. Start out with light loads and inspect closely each reload. I buy lots of brass at yard sales and auctions not knowing anything about it. I start with light loads and continue from there. Some have up to 40 reloads now.

 

[jcwit]

What caliber? If its a real common caliber like 9 mm or 40 S&W toss it.

 

[slowr1der]

It's .243 Winchester. It's not like it's something that there is a shortage of. Even if I can't use this brass I still got lots of bullets and powder out of it, but I was hoping to use at least some brass.

 

[GP100man]

I`d take five peices & anneal it then prep as normal , If it survived that I`d load it & shoot it .But then again case failure in rifle presents another whole set of problems .

 

[howlnmad]

I gotta go along with GP100, anneal them and see what happens.

 

[ranger335v]

Several things can make cases split but age, per se, ain't one of them and it's impervious to both dry rot and termites! I'm still using some surplus 1942 GI .30-06 stuff that's just fine.

 

[Arkansas Paul]

As usual, rcmodel nailed it. Shoot the ones that didn't split. It's not going to hurt anything if they split when you shoot them.