Straight wall pistol brass care

[wscywabbit]

I have read that many people do not separate and/or keep track of their straight walled pistol brass like they do with their shouldered rifle brass. Its been said that the cases tend to wear out before they really need to be trimmed. I also understand that brass by different companies and even different lots will have differences in cartridge pressures and longevity due to case thickness and manufacturing tolerances...

Obviously every case needs to be inspected before re-use, so the question is; if all the brass is being used for is range practice, and you're loading recipes aren't pushing max load, does it really need to be separated out? How do you guys (and gals) manage your pistol brass?

[olderndirt]

I load pistol cases by the can full. I don't separate by head stamp only primer size.
Most of my pistol shooting is for range fun with a little bit of hunting rounds. These hunting rounds I load with more care.

[62chevy]

Don't hunt or shoot competition so I don't sort or trim to size. And don't care that much about accuracy as long as I stay in the black.

[Steve]

I agree with olderndirt. Most pistol practice is done at close enough ranges that the average pistol shooter will never be able to detect the slight difference minor component variances make in accuracy.

[akuser47]

I agree with all in that your straight walled brass pistol cases will not gain enough to deal with the time involved in sorting them. I am very careful with my long range distance plan in .308 I weigh every case, every bullet, each is trimmed precisly. and neck sized to my specific rifle. If I was doing some serious pistol comp. I would do the same because then once you are dialed in load and gun training in both there is little chance of a deviation from different cases and such when not being sorted.

[wscywabbit]

Thanks for the quick responses guys! I have a ton of brass that I've picked up for my 40, and its all cleaned and sorted. I've noticed that others aren't as meticulous with their pistol brass and was wondering if I'm over thinking it lol. It sure would be easier to store it all (both dirty and clean) if I weren't separating by stamp...

[akuser47]

Just remeber the biggest variance in case wall thickness is found mostly in nato brass. This really should not apply to .40S&W. Just in case keep your calipers ready to gauge some case wall thicknesses. This the thickness of case walls changes the powder volume in these cases. ever so slight changes accuracy of intended rounds loaded.

[larryw]

My standard procedure for plinking & casual range work is,
clean 'em, load 'em, shoot 'em, repeat.
Different story when it comes to long range plates or targets,
& hunting loads.

[Ranch Dog]

I'm no different than you fellows but I do load the same bullet for both range shooting and self defense. With the later, take the same care that I give my hunting ammo. That includes all the steps you would normally take a rifle cartridge through.

Same with the revolver type cartridge that are for used in my leverguns. This stuff will end up for hunting use and I treat it such.

[Model 52]

It really depends on the cartridge.

I've been using the same set of 150 .45-70 cases for BP and BP velocity smokeless loads in my Sharps now for about 15 years and still have not worn them out. With that in mind the BP loads are not resized with the bullet being a press fit in the cartridge due to the brass, bullet and chamber dimensions. The moral there is that the less you work the case, the longer it will last, and if you don't work it at all it will last a LONG time.

Generally, I've found .45 ACP cases will keep going until the mouth eventually splits, and the less you work the brass belling it, the longer it will take to split.

With .45 Colt and .32 ACP I've found the case life tends to be pretty short for a pistol cartridge. The .45 Colt was designed as straight wall case to maximize capacity, and as such was the .44 Mag of it's day. However, to ensure extraction from heavily founded chambers with BP loads, the chamber specs for the .45 Colt are slightly tapered, so the rear of the case tends to expand quite a bit, and then gets work hardened when it's sized back down to a straight case. Given that it's a comparatively thin walled case, I'll usually find them getting spider cracks in the middle of the case and when you can see daylight through the sides of the case, it's obviously done.

I see the same thing with the .32 ACP and I suspect it's because a couple of the pistols I shoot it in have pretty generous chambers designed to ensure reliable feeding, so again the walls gets stretched a lot with each firing and worked a lot when resized.

In terms of rifle cartridges the shortest lived cases I have are .22 Hornet cases. It's a thin walled case that tends to be substantially smaller than most .22 Hornet chambers so if it's full length resized it'll start getting cracks in the sides of he case after 4-5 loads. However if you keep it dedicated to a single rifle and neck size it only, and don't get carried away with the pressure, it will last a few more loads.