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picked up a bunch of brass in trade. Does anyone out there know it the older 308 brass is of better quality then the newer? I have brass with LC,WCC and RA 53 to 63 stamped on them. is it worth reloading or should I junk it. Cleaned up nice De-priming was a bubblegum other than that there are no obvious signs of damage. any input would be great.
 
It's probably military brass, had crimped primers which made them so hard to get out, right? You'd then have to remove those crimps to re-prime, I'm sure you know.

If all of the cases were crimped, then they are probably once-fired. If reloaded, they would have had the crimps removed. I'd never reload brass which had already been reloaded by someone else for several reasons.

I also don't like mixed head stamps, but that's up to you. Different brands especially will have different brass thicknesses and different base thicknesses. That means that when you re-size them they will have different interior volumes. A smaller volume means the round will build pressure faster and build more pressure. That's not dangerous if you use powder to specs, but it does vary bullet speed and therefore barrel harmonics and they will shoot to a different point of aim.

If they are just for plinking and are once-fired, no problem. If they are for serious accuracy work such as hunting, I'd decline.

$.02
 
every case was crimped and the pin mark in the primer was larger than anything I have seen and flat. planned to use it for plinking thanks for the information.

Carefully inspect the sides of each case for any swollen spots, just above the base. If you see any, toss them. I see that occasionally on military brass and the brass is stretched to a point that it is weakened. I've heard several versions of why that happens so I'm not going to say, but the only point we need to know is not to use them.

Otherwise, those will be really good cases for you after you remove the crimps. :s0155:
 
I use the military brass in my down loaded hand cast bullet stuff so the volume thing doesnt affect me as much as a case load would. Remember to down load your powder by 10% to compensate for thicker brass and you will see good accuracy from all your loads but for extreme accuracy you will need to cc the cases and seperate them by volume for the best groups. Plinking is great fun when you can hit what you are shooting at, no matter how small it is or how far away it is!!
 
I have had some experience loading .308 military brass.

Because military brass primer pockets have been crimped you will need to resize or swage the primer pocket before the brass can be primed. Without swaging the pocket it will almost be impossible to prime the brass and you will crush a lot of primers in the process. Here is a link to an article about using military brass:

<broken link removed>

There are different tools on the market to help you swage the brass. I use a Dillon swager. Its fast and you only have to do it once. Here is a link to info on the Dillon tool:

https://www.dillonprecision.com/
 

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