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I'm glad you kept them for reloading in your bolt gun...otherwise I would become more leery of range brass I pick up knowing I could find something with that history. ;) lol

Now trap shooters will load just about anything. It amazes me to hear about some of the "cost saving" reloading techniques using hulls that are barely together, with powder from suspect origins and salvaged primers, that they put into $10,000 guns.

But I'll admit, even after I retire my hulls...I still keep them just in case.
 
Dang you are bored, you need more like that you are welcome to root around in my scrap bucket and dig out all you want. But to answer your question today I wouldn't mess with them. If I was that bored you bet I would.
 
In this day and age, yes that brass is normally recycled (discarded). BUT, "what if" in a SHTF or Mad-Max scenario?

When I read the initial post my first thought was "If I absolutely had to, sure! But I would not shoot it out of a semi-auto. Bolt only."

The only issue that I thought might happen was the neck would split when trying to straighten.

So to answer your initial post, if i absolutely had to use them, yes I would do what I could to bring them back to life (like you did).

If the neck split, then they would become many little shrapnel pieces then loaded into 12GA rounds. (In a SHTF or Mad-Max scenario).

Excellent post!

:s0155:
 
Call it "cabin fever". I've been cooped up in the house with my wife and 4 kids for a couple weeks. I've even been "working from home" about half the time, going in only when necessary. Everyone is going a little nuts. :)

Thanks for all the input. You all are absolutely right when you say scrap them. Normally brass like this ALWAYS goes in the scrap bucket. I didn't do this just to salvage some brass. I've got a 5 gallon bucket full of perfectly good 5.56 brass. It was just a fun little project, and an enjoyable waste of time.

I see and hear about people who toss otherwise good ammo and brass because it's got a small dent or two. This brass was extreme junk that even I would toss.i just used it to illustrate how minor dents are no big deal. My own grandfather would toss ammo in the brush if he accidentally dropped it on the ground, and he thought that ALL reloading was inherently unsafe.

I used to load a lot of brass that I wouldn't load now, back in the day when I was really pinching pennies, and didn't have access to free brass off the ground at the range. Once (a long time ago) I found a dozen 30-06 cases on a gravel logging road, run over by trucks, that looked worse than these. I carefully straightened the ones I could, fire-formed them with a light load, then ended up using them repeatedly in an M1 Garand. As I recall, I got 8 to 10 loading out of them, moderate level 150gr FMJ. They functioned fine.

No, I wouldn't do it again, and no, I'm NOT advocating it. I'm just relating what happened. I did these things after researching and understanding the process, how the brass cartridge works and exactly what it does. I wasn't some dumb hick saying "hold my beer and watch this". I'm actually quite cautious by nature, but I like to know how things work, and why. Please don't take this thread as advocating doing foolhardy, foolish stuff just for kicks.

A really important distinction- damage to the case HEAD is bad news. That's the part that keeps all the high pressure gassed out of your face. You don't want to mess around with that.
 
They're as ugly as a 2am Cougar in a biker bar.... throw them out!!! Cuz you really have no idea what you're getting yourself into. Besides, they're ugly. :D
 
Almost forgot- the load: Sierra 52gr hpbt bullets over surplus Accurate 2200 powder. It's a load that shouts well in that rifle, around 3200 FPS as I recall. There were no signs at all of high pressure. Honestly I think that 4 of the 5 being inside 1/2 moa is a bit of luck. That's better than I normally shoot with carefully selected nice brass.

The rifle- it was the cheapest Remington 700 you could get at the time, and the first one I ever bought brand new. I paid $299 for it, Christmas of '02, I think, at a Bi-Mart in either Eugene, Springfield, or Creswell (I forget which). The only thing I've ever done to it was replace the cheesy plastic stock with an old walnut ADL stock I had laying around. It's always been a great shooter.
 
Glad the experiment worked out & nice grouping.

The phrase "Barrato sale caro" came to mind.
Translated, that means "going cheap becomes expensive'

Suerte.
 
yes, Im resurrecting a 1 year old thread... no need to post the "bring out your dead" video. :p
This showed up in the "similar threads" as I was typing a new post.

I had 2 FTE jams today that resulted in 2 bent cases. I found and solved the problem but took the 2 damaged rounds and fireformed them. Cant tell the difference now in the fireformed brass but it made me wonder if they were weaker somehow....?

Would you reload this?
Selection_001.jpg
 
Yeah, im not reusing them, pretty much got my answer reading thru the thread.... 223 brass is cheap and available nothing exotic worth saving.
 
I'm not rich, but I'd never try and reload ANYTHING that looked like the OP's 'choice brass'. In fact, I deliberately crimp the ends of all my time-expired cases to prevent anybody else from trying to resurrect them.
 

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