Loading for AR, I use once fired brass, load it four more times, and then scrap it.
How to keep track of the number of firings? Soon you have a pile of twice fired, four times fired, etc. How do y’all keep track?
Don’t reload but I’ve read people use markers. 1 line/ring/notch = 1 reload, 2 lines/rings/notches = 2 reloads…etc…
Or change colors or add colors. Whatever makes more sense to you
It’s easy. Keep brass separated in coffee cans, boxes, whatever and track how many times brass in each container has been fired. I’ve been doing this for over 35 years with 30-06 brass, 7.62x51mm brass, etc.
If you are training at the range by yourself, police the area you are going to shoot in before sending rounds down range. Only collect brass known to you.
When in doubt, throw it out.
I keep everything in 50 or 100 round lots. These are kept together and therefore number of reloads can be tracked. This is also facilitated by the use of a brass catcher.
Honestly the big motivation for me keeping them separate is avoiding trimming. If I keep my brass separate, generally cases can go 3-4 firings without trimming. This really cuts down on labor. I HATE trimming.
I don’t. I just visually inspect and cull when needed.
Discipline! I keep all of my brass sorted by lot. The exception to this is if the year of manufacture is on the headstamp, then I treat them all as one lot. I never fire two batches of ammo with the same headstamp during a range session. This method obviously won’t work if you used mixed headstamp once fired brass from the start.
This. I tried keeping track of brass, and it became an unmanageable nightmare. I recycle brass when the pocket is loose.
And you don’t have any problems, e.g. case head separations? I run pistol brass until the mouth splits, but I was always told that full-length resizing limited semi-auto brass to about four or five reloads.
Brass failure can happen. But if you discard brass with loose primer pockets, and don’t run mega hot loads, the rate of failure is pretty low.
The failure mode I have seen the most in 223 brass is neck splits. But those don’t necessarily harm the gun or cause a stoppage.
How many reloads you get is really dependent on many factors. I have fired military 308 brass in my 308 AR past 8 firings with no issues, albeit with mild loads and the brass looking kind of beat up by that time.
You guys will laugh at this. It’s not a suggestion in the OP’s context but just, I think, interesting.
A guy who mentored me in accuracy and rifle construction, and life in general, was a benchrest shooting legend in the '70’s, and before, and after. He also made the dies that winning benchresters used to make their own perfected bullets (among those who used them to great success was Walt Berger, yes, that Berger). My friend’s name was Bob Simonson.
Now bearing in mind that benchresters will shoot a whole season or maybe more on a small quantity of meticulously-prepared cases, this was Bob’s method for tracking how many times each piece had been used: file a tiny notch in the edge of the rim. Obviously not for us.
I long ago gave up trying to track this and preemptively discard cases. Neck splits and easy-seating primers are what I use, too.
If your sizing die is set up right, the pockets or necks will go long before separation happens. I’ve had like 5 separations in over 100k rounds. And I pick up all kinds of brass with my only culling factors being split necks and loose pockets.
Mark used to use one of the stickys that come with bullets ie Sierra stickys with load data including brass, grain of powder and used hash marks to denote number of uses on our 300WM loads. But gave up on hash marks when we went over something like 10 loadings , which we were told was impossible in 300, but our 300 brass rocks on.
Now just load data because we have lost count. Most boxes of 50 have 5 or 10 missing that got smoked from extended use.
We never tried to keep track of anything other than 308 or 300.
PB
The amazing thing about this story is actually how many little marks the brass would eventually get on it. BR guys potentially can shoot a barrel out with 100 pieces of brass. Some anneal every firing, use bushing dies, and barely bump the shoulder back… Think like 30 firings on a piece of brass!!! And a 0.4 MOA group is not even remotely competitive.
They wonder why we use rifles that throw perfectly good brass away haha…
I bed I can do this with .308 Palma brass. .308 regulard brass and 300? Not as hot as I load them. I run them till the primers are falling out.
I am not laughing. Benchrest shooters I know still mark their brass with a file. They also index the witness mark in the same spot each and every time they insert a cartridge into the rifle. I am not sure how much rotating the brass a few degrees will affect accuracy, but they insist on consistent indexing.
That is where all of the fun of shooting is LONG GONE in my opinion. Too far removed from practical application. You don’t fight or hunt like that… but to each his own.
Well the typical BR shooter is vastly different than all of us M4C members… Older, probably retired, loves tinkering with stuff, and suffers from serious OCD. About as far removed as possible
I don’t find it fun at all, but I learn a lot about reloading accurate ammunition from these guys.
I like reloading almost as much as I like shooting. For me it’s not about the savings. I get real satisfaction from making quality ammunition. Part of this is keeping my brass separated by lot.
Indeed. We shot with a few of them on High Power range. They flat out told Pappabear that they were nuts, and not to get into BR type of loading/shooting. I definitely learn from their insanity. I mean… we run BR powders in our ammo thanks to them.
I love reloading too, but I had to find a balance due to limited time available. I’d love to load ammo 50 hours per week and not have to work. 