How many times can one safely load Lake City brass? I bump the shoulder back around .003. Primer pockets are still good after six loads. No evidence of case head weakness. (paper clip test) I know some of you throw brass away after about five reloads, but can they be stretched out to around ten?
Will I get split necks before case head separation?
I don’t load hot. I keep my rounds under 50,000 psi regardless of bullet weight (55-69 gr.)
Load til they won’t hold a primer. There’s no safety risk in a case separation. It’s just that it CAN be a pain if the next round doesn’t stick in the brass and pull it out.
A big “depends” applies.
While not loading hot helps, there are many factors that go into what’ll actually happen.
First always measure, measure, measure… keep records on case trimming (gives an indication of brass flow) pockets are just one thing, you are performing the case head test (good- the number one thing I check for), I would anneal the cases well after a few firings to keep brittleness (work hardening) of the neck (splitting) and shoulder down. As long as you are not getting indications of any case problems, load away.
I would stop immediately at the first sign of case overuse to prevent failure. (the last thing you want to have happen, not worth the cost of a case… or a 1000 of them). That’s just me though. I like to err on the side of caution.
I’m the opposite of soulezoo. Now I certainly won’t say his approach is wrong. But I simply load too much .223 to measure it, segregate it, and keep firing counts on it. Almost all my .223 brass is mixed and rotates in two 5 gallon buckets.
Since I load for two shooters, and more sometimes, my brass is nearly impossible to keep organized. So I don’t waste the time and space trying. My process for loading is pretty hand intensive. So I cull a good amount of brass when visually inspecting it through the sizing or priming steps.
I’ve literally never had more than 3 or 4 separations through God knows how many 10s or 100s of thousands of .223 loadings. And when it did happen, it wasn’t a dangerous situation.
With respect to Mark above… we don’t necessarily disagree. And I’ll defer to him on this particular one for sure as he is doing a lot more volume loading than I do… and this is what the OP is doing as well so what Mark is saying is certainly more applicable. Where handgun reloading is concerned (9 and 10mm), what I do does mimic what he describes.
For bottleneck cased cartridges though I am fairly meticulous and my “high volume” shooting for .223/5.56 is ususally factory loaded. I handload a lot of .300 wby, .25-06, .308, .220 swift, .270. My .223 loading is more for wanting to wring the last bit of accuracy and less to do with “volume” shooting. I usually load close to max pressures and I keep a close eye on my stuff. In other words, I lean more toward precision reloading as opposed to the volume reloading.
The thing is… I’m doing precision volume loading. I load 500 rounds of loose packed 77 gr OTMs into a 7.62 can that’ll shoot half MOA or even better when things are clicking.
To your point, I do keep brass much more organized and stuff when it comes to .308, 300WM, 7mag, etc. And on .223 I go slow and easy on the prep, priming, etc… then crank it out with competition dies on the Dillon.
Glad to hear it isn’t as critical as I thought it was. My main concern was separation. I have heard horror stories about destroyed upper receivers on semi autos when all that pressure is released. It has to go somewhere.
Shoot it until it the primer pocket is worn out.