Do you all mark your case each time you reload it, to track which load you are on? i.e., once fired gets a red mark etc. ? I was thinking of doing this and wondered what you all had used, I thought nail polish would work fine (I'd buy it, stealing the wife's is too dangerous).

Red

quote:

Originally posted by Dago Red:
Do you all mark your case each time you reload it, to track which load you are on? i.e., once fired gets a red mark etc. ? I was thinking of doing this and wondered what you all had used, I thought nail polish would work fine (I'd buy it, stealing the wife's is too dangerous).

Red

I don't know how well fingernail polish or any other marking would hold up.

I've heard of using a needle file to cut a small notch in the rim for each reloading.

I personally don't bother, I just keep notes of how many times each batch of brass has been fired. I usually reload 20 rounds at a time, but like to keep 50 - 100 pieces of brass in each batch; to keep track of where I am in the reloading cyclie I simply don't deprime any fired cases until I've gone through the whole batch. When everything has been fired I then prep the whole batch and start the cycle over.

For load development I keep my "good brass" in a cartridge box, frequently plastic, until the whole lot is fired and label the box as needed.

Practice ammo, with old brass, gets tossed into a can that doesn't matter how many times it's been fired, using the same spent cap system as "belaw". (I Size to set my case shoulders snug so when my cases do fail it is a split neck that happens safely, at the bench when it's sized; NEVER had a head seperation!)

The few cases fired in the deer woods are usually lost.

dago

what i do is put a pressure sensative label on the plastic ammo box and put a mark on it every time that i use up those twenty rounds, i then anneal every fourth shooting putting an "a" behind the fourth mark and proceed on. works for me.

b h

If you are looking for an easy way to mark your cases, try getting a Sharpie Permanent Marker. They have smaller pens that are perfect for writing on the brass... it can be rubbed off in the vibrater/tumbler, so you would have to re-mark each case after resizing and cleaning.

I use to keep track of how many times I reloaded my brass by using a good quality black felt pen coloring in one letter on the head stamp every time I reloaded it. I give up on that years ago, now I just use them until the first sign of stress than throw them away.

I segregate in boxes & mark the boxes.

I load my brass in 20 rd lots and each lot gets a plastic box, I just mark the plastic box how many times loaded, aneled, trimmed etc

TMW

Maybe I am very bureaucratic, but this works for me:

- I have divided all my cases into batches of 100 ct each.
- Each batch goes into a plastic transparent box(from Container Store, $ 1.85, color coded for each caliber I shoot).
- All batches are used up according to their serial # (batch 1 - batch 2 - batch 3 etc.).
- I reload batch by batch. The loaded rounds go into their respective plastic box.
- So do the spent cases of the respective batch, which I segregate from the loaded rounds by packing them into a Ziploc bag.
- When all rounds are used up I prep the cases, step by step.
- On top of the prepped cases, visible though the transparent lid of the plastic box, I put an index card with a table: the rows indicate the various steps of case preparation, the columns indicate the dates when I decapped, trimmed, deburred etc. One index card contains 5 case prepping processes. After 4 cards I usually dump the brass. Thus, all over the life cycle of the brass, I have a complete history.

It's not as much work as it sounds, and I find it very helpful.

I will go with the marking the case they are in route, that is what I have been doing but was thinking of marking the brass. Thanks guys.

Red

Red,

Yes I am marking all of my cases each time I reload them. I mark the case heads with a high tech, ergonomically designed tool that took me months to perfect.

The system works very well for me. Before punching out the primer I mark all case heads and the mark represents that the case was fired another time. With a quick glance you can tell how many times any case has been fired.

I drilled holes in my bench to hold the different size cases, but a block of wood clamped to your bench with an assortment of holes works well also. Just push the case into the hole, mark the head with the tool, pull it out, put in another one, and so on.



The image above shows a case that has been fired three times.



This image is of the high tech, ergonomically designed tool that took me months to perfect. I will give you a hint that the one end has to be sharpened, but if you need detailed instructions on its construction, you will have to let me know and I will try to remember all the steps and get back to you.

Jim

Forgot to tell you, you have to put a little pressure on the tool to scratch it deep enough. This is why the high tech grip was added to help eliminate blisters when doing several hundred cases.

I didn't realize this was such a problem...

I put brass in plastic resealable refrigerator bags in lots of 20...

I put a 3 x 5 card in the bag...

I record each load, powder, primer and bullet used per line...

once the brass has been loaded 10 times... the brass, gets put in the spare brass container...

If one piece of brass, fails before the 10th reload, then I pull one from the spare brass container...

After 10 reloads, I consider the brass as spare or scrap...

The plastic bags are cheap, and so are the 3 x 5 cards....

I usually keep multiple bags of the brass in tupperware type rectangular containers you get at Walmart for $1.29 or so....

It is fairly cheap to keep this stuff organized this way....instead of trying to do multiple marks on the brass with a Sharpie or the wife's nail polish....

quote:

Originally posted by seafire/B17G:
I didn't realize this was such a problem...

I put brass in plastic resealable refrigerator bags in lots of 20...

I put a 3 x 5 card in the bag...

I record each load, powder, primer and bullet used per line...

once the brass has been loaded 10 times... the brass, gets put in the spare brass container...

If one piece of brass, fails before the 10th reload, then I pull one from the spare brass container...

After 10 reloads, I consider the brass as spare or scrap...

The plastic bags are cheap, and so are the 3 x 5 cards....

I usually keep multiple bags of the brass in tupperware type rectangular containers you get at Walmart for $1.29 or so....

It is fairly cheap to keep this stuff organized this way....instead of trying to do multiple marks on the brass with a Sharpie or the wife's nail polish....

Seafire,

I can't speak for anyone else but FOR ME, trying to keep cases in lots of 20 or even 50 was frustrating at best and dangerous at worst.

One of the problems is how to account for the firings of a case when you want to throw more than 20 cases in your tumbler. I like to prime more than 20 in a batch, and so on. The norm for me is to process several hundred cases at a time. We use MTM 100 count boxes for all of our pd loads, so batches are often in the hundreds. Cases are shuffled from one loading procedure to the next in plastic coffee containers. Anything smaller than that (for me) would be a step backwards.

Trying to keep brass segregated into "lots" during a pd hunt was futile. Often times I must clean up 50 to 100 rounds of brass from the floor and under the seats of the pickup. When we are on a hot pd town doing a "drive by" the farthest thing from my mind is keeping my brass segregated.

I don't even want to mention what would happen to me if I tried to get the other guys to change the system we are using now. I have tried other ways and so far this works the best for us.

Jim

Well PDH....

Maybe I am a little more organized than yourself.. I do tumble my brass in batches of 20... to keep them segregated...

I also set up with 3 rifles when I shoot rodents, and switch rifles every 20 shots and let the others cool off....

So evidently you are much more trigger happy than I am....

So bottom line, is that I must be pretty boring.. and you are out instead having all the fun, which ain't a bad thing!!!!

I have never been in a prairie dog town that hot... the most shots I have gotten off on a day was about 200...

on sage rats here in Oregon, I have gotten off 500 shots in less than 4 hours...I still manage to keep my brass all organized....

however, for 223, I admit to keeping brass in lots of 100 for that sport....

22.250 and above, lots of 20 work just fine for me... I use the 22.250 for the longer shots, having a high magnification scope on those, and zeroed for longer range...

the 223s take care of everything under 200 yds on sage rats and 250 yrds on prairie dogs...

I've shot a lot of Pdogs but I've never been on any sort of "pray and spray" drive by shooting. What?? are you shooting out of the window of the truck?
Since I wait between shots, I don't have a problem taking the empty case out of the chamber and putting it in a notated bag.
If you want to talk about something being dangerous, talk about driving around "hosing down" a Pdog town from the window of a truck with empties flying every which a way. Not what I'd call sport.

quote:

Originally posted by seafire/B17G:
Well PDH....

Maybe I am a little more organized than yourself..

Seafire,

And my wife would agree with you 100%, and she doesn't even know you.

Jim

I draw a circle around the primer with a Sharpie using a different color for each load: i.e. the ladder method where green=moderate, black=higher pressure, red=top end load. I also write the specific information on every 5th case and in general load 10 rounds of each for testing purposes. After a load is selected I depend on plastic boxes and pressure labels, but back it all up with written notes, targets, lot numbers, and a ballistic print out kept in a binder. Sounds messy, but it works well, especially with large lots of components.
I have some -06 brass that has been reloaded over 20 times, but believe that is false economy. As a rule of thumb I pitch cases that have been trimmed 4 or more times, which roughly equates to about 8 to 12 reloads. Way back when I was really anal I use to keep bullet lot numbers...

As I develop loads I mark ease case with the powder charge with a Sharpie.
One a load is settled on I will mark a couple cases in each lot I load.
When a lot of brass has been fired I decap manually then resize all the brass, trim if required, rinse it with alcohol and store it.
To load it is simple to prime, charge and seat bullets. I don't get stuck with large quantities of components, especially powder tied up in loaded ammo that I may not shoot for a while.

If when I am priming a case, the primer goes in "to easy", I mark it with a Red Spot, and that means to throw it away after firing.

It is easier to just write it with a pen the no. times reloaded on the box for me.