Let's talk about crimp..

[ZeroRing]

Good points to ponder on the brass. I usually pick up my own but sometimes, when a particular range is busy it's just not practical to try and chase down every spent casing before it hits the floor and mixes with assorted "other" brass. When I have tried, invariably I found myself worrying more about keeping track of flying brass rather than the actual shooting... which is NOT the reason for being there in the first place!

If the range isn't too busy I will try and grab a lane towards the end and sweep up the area as much as possible before hand so that I can keep better track of MY brass. But your post has me thinking even that might actually be costing me more in work and logistics than just purchasing the matched head-stamp, LEO range stuff you mentioned.

 

[Gunner3456]

Even with different lot numbers and not truly "matched" hs's, I can still cut cases open and mic them and find that each brand will be almost spot on for wall thickness and base thickness. Since we run each case through a die and length size it, the volumes in same brand brass will be almost spot on. The volumes in different brands will vary considerably.

I try to keep buying the same brand in each caliber, or at least 1,000 of each brand even if I have different brands. I keep the brands separate.

This is just one more of several things that gives reloads a bad rep.

If I were going to try to list the top reasons reloads get a bad rep, this would number right up there.

Another would be failure to case-length resize, leading to uneven crimps and varying volumes. Some uneven crimps on long cases will push the case down too much leading to bulging/springing of the case which then leads to a fat case that gives feeding/extracting problems.

Another right up there would be failure to test a new recipe with a chrony. Without that we don't know if we have speeds/pressures that we expect. We might have excessive speed/pressure or wimpy speed/pressure and not have a clue what our muzzle velocity is, or whether the load is powerful enough to do some damage to the target, or too powerful risking damage to the gun.

With varying case volumes whether from varying brands or failure to length resize, we're really lost.

$.02