Workflow for inspecting/organizing brass?

[egd]

I'm basically just starting reloading. Been reading all I can. I understand brass (for 9mm, btw) can be reloaded several times but should be inspected for cracks, etc. When, what's the easiest way, do you do this?
I plan to deprime then put in a tumbler to clean. I don't care if its shiny or anything, just clean enough to get a good finished round with. Would this be a good time to just sit and feel/look at each case. Or what about as I pick it up to put into the press to start. I have a Lee classic turret press.
I'm kinda leaning toward just doing it as I start to put it in the press as I'll be handling them individually at that point anyway. But maybe there's something I don't know, so I'm looking for any advice you have. Thanks
Oh yeah, How do you keep track of how many times you've fired the brass, or do you? As long as it inspects ok do you just keep shooting it? I plan on just reloading light loads for practice and maybe steel shooting.

 

[GBExpat]

Welcome to THR, edg!

With pistol cases I just give them a quick look and feel as I am placing them in the press.

I repeat this as I remove each completed round, swiping my pinky finger across the base to check for high primers.

For a short while I maintained a history on each case via a sharpie mark on the base but I gave up the practice as not worth the effort for me.

 

[WestKentucky]

I inspect twice. Once before tumble, then once more before sizing. Both are quick inspections. If you deprime before tumble, keep a small roll pin punch handy to push media out of your primer pockets.

My operation...
1. Deprime on universal deprime
2. Inspect. One bucket to another. Look for pressure signs on the case, cracks, deep dents, crimped primers, and in 9mm brass you want to look for .380 brass mixed in, or other brass but 380 is hard to spot due to similar case sizes. Noise is part of the inspection. A tink noise is a good piece of brass. A thunk means something isn't right, usually a split case. Thunk noises get that case pulled out and checked very closely.
3. Tumble
4. Same inspection but quicker
5. Resize
6. Prime
7. Charge
8. Bullet

 

[Gadawg88]

If you are using a vibratory tumbler with corn or walnut media, ther is no need to deprime before you tumble. You will end up with media stuck in some flash holes and the tumbling doesn't really clean the primer hole anyway. Besides depriming before you tumble means you are running dirty brass through your depriming/sizing die. Not the end of the world, but why do it. I come back from the range, sort my brass by caliber, tumble by caliber then put the clean brass in the appropriate storage container. For handgun brass. I just inspect it as I pick it up to load it. Main thing to look for is split mouths. 9mm brass can be loaded many, many times if you are not loading max loads. Don't bother keeping track of how many times unless that just floats your boat. Shoot it till it splits then toss it in the recycle bucket and move on.

 

[moxie]

Welcome to a terrific hobby!

Here's my workflow for handgun brass:
1. Rinse in water & a bit of dish soap to remove any sand, grit, spiders, etc. I use an old plastic colander. Let air dry. First inspection step is putting the cases into the colander by hand one at a time.
2. Tumble in a 50/50 mix of corncob/walnut with a bit of car polish (Nufinish is fine). Inspect each case as you put them in the tumbler. Run for 2-4 hours.
3. Size/deprime. Inspect.
4. Expand. Inspect. Re-prime.
5. Powder charge. Inspect EACH case with bright flashlight to see that it not over/undercharged.
6. Seat/crimp. Crimp ONLY enough to remove the flare from the expansion step.
7. Measure OAL. Measure OD at case mouth. It should be ~ .376".
8. Do case gage and plunk test.

Yes you can reload the cases repeatedly as long as they pass your inspection. Guidelines are in any good manual.

 

[gunnels]

I think people over do (and for some reason take pride in) the cleaning process for brass. When I return from the range my range bag is about 1/4 full of brass. I sort it out by caliber. Then I toss each of the calibers into the vibratory cleaner and clean it for about 4 hours. That is it. There is no need to make it more complicated than it has to be.

 

[jmorris]

Not sure how many thousands I have loaded and never touched a case. They all go through my fingers into and out of a casegauge though before being boxed up.

 

[cfullgraf]

As I handle the handgun cases between the different operations, I keep an eye out for problems. I do not do a "special inspection" step.

After a while, you will get a good feel of what effort is required to resize the case. If the case has a major crack, the resizing effort will be next to nothing. So, any case that does not feel normal during resizing, I inspect carefully and usually find a crack.

Similar when bullet seating except now you have to disassemble the round to recover the good components.

If you are loading on a progressive, this "feel" is a bit different than a single stage since you are doing several operations at one time. Then you have to look at a couple places to see if there is a case failure.

When shooting revolvers, frequently you can find split cases when ejecting them from the revolver. Again, it feels different. Unfortunately, this does not work with semi-auto handguns.

Rifle cases, by their nature get handle more due to extras steps like measuring and trimming. I have a couple rifles that I generally fail cases due to expanded primer pockets. These are difficult to pick up during the standard reloading process so as the cases get more cycles on them, I will deprime the cases in a separate step to check the tightness of the primer pocket.

I do not keep track of the cycles on handgun cases or blasting/plinking rifle ammunition. I do keep track of the cycles on rifle ammunition where its reliability is important (match ammunition, hunting ammunition, etc).

 

[Bronx kid]

When I return from the range I sort my brass by caliber then tumble. I then take a case in each hand, insect inside of case to check if there is any media inside, turn them sideways & spin them with my fingers looking for cracks. I then sort by headstamp.

 

[Ditchtiger]

insect inside of case to check if there is any media inside.

How did you train a bug to do internal case inspections?

 

[ATLDave]

I sort my brass by headstamp. I usually find any problem brass during this process. As another poster above wrote, if a piece of brass with a crack in it gets through that process and into the loading flow, the feel on the press is pretty different, and the problem becomes apparent. Finally, I case-gauge every round. If the rim has gotten a burr on it, then the case gauge will resist. (I mark those rounds so I don't try to use them in competition or any time it might matter, but I do generally shoot them rather than pull the bullet... about 9 times out of 10, they cycle and fire just fine. Then I just don't pick up that brass again.)

 

[moxie]

Post #10: lol!! Beat me to it.

 

[mdi]

I have a tendency to "inspect" my brass several times during a reloading session. I'll give a quick look before anything; smashed beyond repair? Steel/Aluminum? Then tumble and after separating from the media I'll inspect pretty thoroughly; headstamp (toss Amerc, separate), check for structural damage (cracks/splits, gouges, distorted heads, etc.) and general overall appearance. After each operation, I'll check the case to see if anything has happened during the previous operation. And a final inspection as I box the reloads in case I've missed anything...

But I got plenty of time for reloading and little time for gun repairs...

 

[egd]

Thanks everyone. I think I have a pretty good idea of what I'll do now. I think checking them as I handle them in the reloading process will be sufficient.
And I FINALLY have some powder now. There was a gun show here today and I just went and found some powder. I've been looking for a few weeks now and there was none to be had. I've had my brand new press set up for a week and couldn't use it. Talk about torture.... I bought two pounds of Win 231. That should hold me a while.

 

[vaalpens]

My 9mm and 40S&W routine is the following:
-Wash with Dawn and LemiShine about 2 hours
-Rinse and dry outside in sun
-put in tumbler for at least 2 hours
-Decap, resize and sort by headstamp. Inspect as you go along. Put in ziplock bags and container for ready to brush.
-Brush inside of body and primer pocket, inspect and feel for any split brass. Bag per 50 and put in container for ready to prime.
-Prime and move to container for ready to load. Visual inspection.
-Bell, inspect for splits and start load process.

 

[edleit]

Nice find on powder! With 231 and 115gr bullets you should be good for round about 1500 per pound, + or -. As always, start at the low end and work your way up.

 

[TimSr]

Its easier to inspect brass after its tumbled. If I deprime before tumbling I have to manually poke a piece of media out of almost every primer hole. Also I prefer resizing clean brass to avoid grit scratching the brass in the resizing die.

When I load a box of ammo, I write all details of the load in a log book, including how many times the brass has been fired. I try to keep that same brass together throughout its life. I used to sort everything by headstamp before loading. Is stopped sorting for semi's long ago unless I'm loading some kind of specialty ammo.

 

[Toprudder]

I know I do more work than is necessary, but here is what I do.

1) Sort brass by caliber. I have those plastic slotted tubs to do most of the sorting, it works pretty well.

2) Setup my single stage with a universal decapper die, and decap. I do a cursory inspection of the cases, mainly to make sure the inside doesn't have a rock or something stuck in there. Sometimes I find a 380 mixed in with the 9mm, sometimes I notice a split case.

3) Once I have a large enough quantity of a caliber, I wet tumble. (I use ArmorAll Wash and Wax, no need to dry tumble afterwards). I like to have clean brass for the inspection in the next step.

4) Check headstamps, especially 9mm range pickup. This is mainly for finding Nato headstamps that need decrimping of the primer pocket, but also to toss out any Ammoload or AMERC headstamps. This is also to find any 380 or 9mak mixed in. While I am sorting, I am doing a full inspection. I will hold the case mouth against my thumbnail and spin it. If it snags, I check to see if the case mouth is split.

After the above, I just run the brass through the reloading process normally. I will drop each case through a case gauge as a final inspection.

Does anyone really need to do all the above, for pistol ammo? No, not really. I enjoy doing it, though. It is somewhat theraputic for me.

I don't bother keeping track of how many times pistol ammo has been shot. If it passes inspection, it is good to go.

 

[spitballer]

For my rifle cases I use a flip-top box with plenty of spacing and rotate brass from left to right, but I seldom fire more than 15-20 rounds a week.

 

[X-Ring]

My brass handling technique.
1) Brass is brought back from the range or place of purchase and sorted for caliber and a preliminary inspection for obvious damage is preformed.
2) Brass is run through my Dillon XL 650 with only a universal decaping die installed. This is accomplished quickly as the cycle rate of the Dillon so equipped is about 1300 rounds per hour.
3) Brass is stainless steel pin tumbled.
4) Brass (rifle brass only) is lubed and FL sized, again on the Dillon. Then case length is checked and if needed trimmed and deburred.
5) Brass is tumbled in corn cob / walnut mix and Nu Finish. Then final preloading quality check is preformed.
6) Brass is then stored in Zip loc plastic bags to be loaded later. This is done to keep bugs and dirt out.

 

[GLOOB]

Sort by caliber. Tumble. Load a small batch of test rounds and plunk test.

If you have cracked 9mm cases, you will feel them when you flare/expand the cases. If you have badly bulged cases you will be able to notice them at some point during the above. I don't go out of my way to inspect any cases, except for new 223 cases. I have found enough of those that are stretched that I gauge those before doing anything else.