to sort brass or not

[conan32120]

when the ammo shortage first hit i started reloading considerably more .223 and 9mm. my questions to any readers is do you sort your brass and do you have a preferred brand? Myself, in 9mm I just load up whatever range brass i come upon but with .223 I recently started looking for that perfect load and began sorting out specific brass for ladder work.

 

[AJC1]

Your purpose determines your requirements. In a gas gun you would sort looking for hard cases most likely military like lake city. In a bolt gun you would sort for whatever you find the most consistent or volume that you could weight sort for consistently. The rabbit hole is deep depending on what you really want.

 

[Aletheia]

Do an experiment. Weigh different manufacturers brass and get an average. They will not be the same. Since they are supposed to all the the same on the outside dimensions, any differences in weight must be either differences in alloy, or differences in inside dimensions. I segregate all my brass according to manufacturer and never mix them if I'm using "max" loads.

 

[AgPilot]

For just plinking with My pistol I don’t worry about brand. My carry pistol I have factory Critical Defense. In My rifles I keep all components the same when loading .

 

[Demi-human]

do you sort your brass and do you have a preferred brand?

Yes, I do. By the lot, by weight.
Lapua.

Unless it’s an AR. Then it’s sorted by head stamp, prepped, and loaded. Lake City being preferred but not required. Starline is great!
(Actually, I’m not picky, I’ll take anything that’s free and dirty.)

 

[hdwhit]

I sort my .223, 9mm and 45ACP brass.

This is because I use a single-stage, non-compound-leverage press. (I.e. an RCBS Reloader Special dating from 1979).

In the absence of compound-leverage combined with 40+ years experience, I can often "feel" differences between cases of the same headstamp when they are being resized. A feeling that has allowed me to identify cases with potential problems that escaped visual inspection.

My limited experience with compound-leverage presses (which includes all modern progressive presses) is that their users could miss out on the opportunity to discover anomalies in their brass.

So, if you load on a single-stage, I would say that sorting your brass would not be a waste of time.

In any case, I would recommend every reloader/handloader spend time inspecting their "previously-fired" brass for potential defects.