How long does brass last? Answered.

[RBHarter]

The question is how many times can brass be loaded ?
The answer is....
I've had 06' split necks on the 2 firing from factory, of course I have a couple lots with 20+ loads .
I have 45 Colts with 40+ loads and 9mm with the head stamps almost peened out .
I've even had head separation on 22-250 factory ammo in a rifle that you could feel the shoulder bump when you closed the bolt .
After 40 cycles the the Colts has grown too short . Fortunately there's a shorter cartridge I can run and if they split in 10 cycles then I'm out the time I spent trimming the down to 45 Schofield.
The secret of long case life is ;
Don't size it more than you too.
Anneal it before the first one fails .
If the case has a design pressure that isn't raised by later cartridges running higher pressures then running it to the walls isn't going to be useful for case life . 70s and before 30 Rem and 6.5 Carcano come to mind . New production running in the same plant with 6.8SPC , 40 &10mm are likely to be more durable in respect to pressure wearout .

Ultimately brass lasts until it cracks , won't hold a primer , won't pass your QC , or gets too short to load or form into something else.

[Royce]

The strait walled pistol brass seems to last indefinitely. I think I have loaded 357 Magnum and 45 Colt cases 40 or more times with no apparent problems yet. I do not reload for rifle - yet. I bet the rifle cases that are necked down are a problem.

[RBHarter]

I've read a lot of guys that fire rifle case only 3-4 times and scrape them . I can't argue that some rifles are just hard on brass . 303 Britt in Enfields seems to land pretty high on that list .

I find that annealed necks and shoulders and minimal sizing helps extend life greatly . As a test of the theory,in a manner of speaking, I've had 06's in all levels of perceived shelf quality from 2 Savage 110s , Rem BDL , 760 Rem , 11/43 Rem 1903A3 , to a 57' M70 . The chambers were all different, the 760 almost pushed me to a Small Base die . All of them passed the go/no go headspace checks being just a hint over minimums and well under maximums the major differences were in the actual rim to shoulder and neck lengths and shoulder diameters . 1 of the Savages had a fat body all the way down , oddly enough the 760 , a slide action , had the tightest chamber of any of them . Had I sized everything to fit the 760 I would have had short brass life in the Savage , 1903 and M70 Win . Neck sizing or in my case setting up 2 FL dies , 1 to make the 760 work , seriously some brands of factory brass fired in the 760 wouldn't go back in it after they came out , 1 to size the rest just enough for neck tension and ensure good feeding. Of course except for the 760 they were all bolt guns . The fat chambered Savage 110 was known as Donna , short for Primadonna , for a lot of reasons and lessons . Among others the difference between short or neck sizing only and full length or new brass was 2.5-3" at 100 yd.

The learned "hoorah FL size everything the benchrest guys say it's the only way" crowd missed the part of the class where they talk about the benchrest guys having chambers and dies matched to limit sizing and a guy shooting a whole match with 1 case indexed to the chamber . They also missed the part about the potential of production chambers and dies lining up to give you a minimum all but match chamber and a maximum just barely sizes enough to fit die . The sizer only needs to make the thinnest neck -.002 of the nominal bullet dia and the rest of the case .001 smaller than the smallest chamber allowed by spec and manufacturer tolerance.

If you get a chamber cut with a brand new reamer and a die cut and finished with the last cut die reamer and polish lap you have a set up to kill brass .
I moved backwards to steel dies for the 45 Colts and Schofield. Those coke bottle cases are a classic example of the above exaggerated even further by a Rossi chamber. It's just hard on cases to blow them out to .496 and size them back to .465 then cram a .454 cast bullet back in the neck .

[thebige58]

I to use a steel sizer die for 45 Colt brass so as to not over work the brass.

[FlaNative]

Im still shooting 38 Special brass that says "Peters" on the head...not "Remington-Peters"...just Peters!
I have 45 acp brass thats been fired so many times that whatever was stamped on the head is long gone.
Bottle necked brass...not so much.
My cast bullet rifle brass lasts almost indefinitely but the small amount of rifle brass that I use with jacketed bullets get tossed after several reloads. I stopped annealing a long time ago simply because Im lazy.

[Bill Moore]

I reload pistol brass until the headstamp is almost unreadable, I'm not sure how many loadings. (I sort by headstamp, everybody tells me it's unnecessary, but I can't help it!)

[RBHarter]

Bill ,
I have some 9mm that has the HS almost gone , well half depth anyway.

My 45 Colts,40+ cycles got too short . Only .02 but none of it was ever trimmed either .

I've had over 20 cycles on 06' and split necks 3rd cycle in spite of annealing.