Posted this in the reloading section, but thought some of you fellow varmint shooters might not see it there and would find this interesting....


Posted 19 March 2009 21:11
Stretching out Brass Life

With the cost of components getting higher and the availability getting scarce, this desired project of mine became very timely.

I started this out with 5 batches of lots of 10 pieces of brass each, in both 223 and 22.250 calibers.
As availability of 22 caliber bullets rapidly disappeared from the shelves, I finally slowed that down to two batches and finally one batch of each lots.

The 223 brass was Remington and the 22.250 brass was Winchester. Since the results are pretty near identical, I will just use the 223 Remington for the sake of this report.

In the Remington brass, I decided on a mild load of 14 grains of SR 4759 with a 55 grain Hornady SP as my standard bullet and load. Based on availability, with the 223, both Small Rifle and Small Pistol primers were use. I picked this load, as this is one of two loads I commonly use out of the test rifle.

The test rifle was a Remington 700 ADL with a 24 inch sporter barrel. This was in a bolt action rifle.

My goal for this test was to be able to get 50 reloads out of this lot of brass. I will follow thru for my own on a couple of other lots of brass, but feel the results will be the same.. and learning a few new things, predict that the case life can be stretched out beyond the 50 reloads, by quite a bit.

The other important thing here is Dies. I have learned that more brass is destroyed at the reload bench resizing that any where else. I have also learned that certain types of dies and procedures allow long brass life, by producing less wear on working the brass.

Lee Collet Dies

Instead of full length sizing dies, for this test I use Lee Collet Neck Sizing die to resize the neck after each firing. These do not resize any other part of the case except the neck.

Redding Body Dies

When the cases became hard to chamber, instead of a full length die, I used a recently discovered ( by me at least) wonderful product from Redding, their Body Die. This die only bumps back the shoulder of the case. Unlike the Full length die sizers, it does not resize and therefore stress the rest of the case, that usually leads to cracks at the webb at the bottom of the case after 10 to 15 reloads. This is very important to stretch out case life.

Key is that these cases were being used in the same rifle over and over, so that the brass adapted to the rifle’s chamber, so therefore did not have to be completely resized back to SAAMI specs….This worked so well, that I did not have to use the Full Length die to resize the brass, until I had done 47 reloads on the brass, to bring it back into specs, due only to a slight increase of chambering difficulty.

Brass Trimming

Based on the load being used and the use of the body die, I did not have to trim the brass at all during this project. I did do it at the 48th reload, just to see if it was getting stretched at all.. and the case stretching was actually pretty minimal. Sadly one of two casualties during the entire project was at this point, as I screwed up one of the pieces of brass when I neck sized it with the Lee Collet Die after trimming them.

Annealing

This is another thing I have finally started doing, was annealing the cases. Mine didn’t turn out pretty like Lapua cases are from the factory. Mine got black and skuzzy. I tried the method where they are heated and dropped in water. They ended up black on the upper half, and looked like crap. I also switched to just dropping them into a small metal bucket, and just let them air dry. That appeared to have no difference and didn’t make them as black as using the water.

I did try and stretch the annealing out to every 10th reload on the brass, which worked fine, except the first casualty I had on this batch of 223, was at the 41st reload. It developed a small neck split.. One new member on a forum said that he was annealing this brass after every 4th reload. After the neck split, I switched over to this, and think it is a good idea.

Depriming and Priming:

I have to admit of picking up a habit of being anal retentive when it comes to depriming. I got started on using a Lee Univeral Deprimer several years ago. Yes it adds and extra step, but it has also cut down on the number of stuck cases in my dies I have had to wrestle out of them.

As far as repriming, none of the primer pockets loosened up over the 50 reloads. A prudent load did help out, but then again, this rifle is used for varmint shooting at 200 yds or less, so max velocity was not needed. So backing off on the throttle, will help primer pockets stay nice and tight.

Conclusion:

If you want to stretch out your brasses case life, which is essential for high volume varmint shooter
I recommend the following:
1. Redding Body Die.. was needed to be used on this test every 10th reload.
2. Lee Collet Die… used each time of course
3. Annealing: Get yourself an Annealing set up you like to work with. I recommend this every 4th to 5th reload on the brass
4. Prudence: backing off a little on max velocity, saves you brass by stressing it less
5. Dedicate: Dedicate each lot of brass to a dedicated rifle, if you own several varmint rifles in the same caliber as I do.

The testing itself was pretty boring, just like lab work. You have to have a results orientated focus to do it. You get into a pattern, but it is pretty much load and shoot, load and shoot. I have plenty of forest around here, so just going a mile up the road, I had a spot to discharge my firearm to do this testing over and over…The Remington brass performed well thru the entire test!

Test Casualties:

As said above, out of the 50 reloads, I had two casualties. One at 41st reload, by a neck split, which if I would have annealed the brass on a more vigorous schedule, it probably would not have occurred.
The second casualty was operator error, at the 48th reload, so we can’t blame the procedure. If Seafire wasn’t all thumbs at times, it would have made it to the 50 reload mark with the other cases.

Return on investment:

Consider this though. Using 223 as an example. A bag of 100 pieces of brass, is say $22 to $25.00 at today’s prices. Using these procedures, if you can get 50 reloads out of each case, that one bag of 100 pieces of brass, will yield you 5,000 shots down the barrel! With prices of brass, and even worse, questionable availability, this yields a pretty good Return on Investment. Considering this was also picked up range brass, I had zero cost into the brass I used for this experiment.

Seafire
March 2009

Seafire yesterday i was working some brass in my shop and looked at the headstamp it was 1xfired 223 it was 1968, don't know how mant times it was shot but mild loads sure make it last.Good Luck

GREAT report seafire2. Thank you for the effort you put into your research and communicating it to us. I thought the original seafire was a nice person also.

Good point on annealing. I partial neck size (Redding Competiton dies with interchangeable bushings) and anneal every two loads and concur with your results. I love the wssm. They are a handloader's dream.

Seafire-

Thanks for the report and sharing your findings. You always contribute tons of good information for others to benefit from.

I have a particular batch of 7mm Bullberry brass that is now on its 24th firing. For those unfamiliar with the cartridge, it's the 30-30 necked down to 7mm International Rimmed with the unnecessarily-long neck then trimmed back to give a case length of 1.75".

Most of the brass in this lot is Rem; some is W-W. None has even been annealed, and other than the initial go-round to square things up, the brass has seen 3 trimmings as the case design isn't as prone to stretching in the Contender as other more tapered cases may be. I use Redding dies and partially FL size the cases.

Neck tension is still excellent, primer pockets are still snug, and I have yet to lose a single case to a split of any sort.

All have been full-house loads that probably fall into the 39500-40000 c.u.p. range.

Some of the credit indeed goes to the brass and case design along with a chamber that is min sped'd.

On the other hand, another particular small lot (50 pieces) of WW brass has given me a number of splits in the neck area after 5-7 firings in a 6.5x30-30 Bullberry Imp (aka 6.5x30-30 AI). Other lots are still going strong after 10+ firings -- and again, no lost cases.

On the other side of the coin, some WW brass in 25-35 was pitiful in terms of quality last fall in a 25x30-30 barrel, also with a min spec'd chamber. It was incredibly thin in critical areas and would split in the body upon the first firing with a relatively mild load.

I also had 2 pieces of the brass fired in a 25-35 chamber just so WW could not second-guess my fireforming techiniques. One of these had a significant split; the other had a hairline crack from which gases escaped to soot the case.

Winchester sent me a return authorization #, but after several months, I still have yet to hear back from them.

I guess it's time for me to call again and rattle their cages a bit...

One of the .223 Rem Blue Dot loads I got from you a while back is also easy on brass. From a Contender barrel, I think the first batch went something like 14 firings without the need to trim. The load pushed the 36 grain Varmint Grenade at a mild 3260 fps and gave me excellent accuracy and a report that fell somewhere between that of a .22 Magnum and a .22 Hornet.

Again, thanks for sharing your information. Many of use here truly do appreciate it.

Tommy,

thanks very much for the kind words...

I appreciate it, and being able to assist my fellow shooters is a great return on my time spent doing all this stuff...

I pass on stuff I find to others and I learn stuff from others...

may not be the same people, but collectively, we learn from each other... and that is what makes sites like this so great...