Home Forums Reloading Big Game Rifles How many realistically keep track of cartridge firings?

yeah, probably anal retentive to a lot of guys....

but I am of this school of thought....

brass gets put into a 'lot number' which means a quart zip lock bag....along with a 3 x 5 card in a sandwich sized zip lock ( which will hold multiple cards)

most of my brass is now range brass picked up... sorted and cleaned...

for each firing I record the powder & charge, the bullet, the primer used, and whether Neck sized or full length sized...and the date....

I anneal every 4th firing, except on light loads...

for sizing brass, I use a Lee Collet die, and then a Redding Body Die if the shoulder needs to be bumped back....

started doing this stuff, "in case brass might be hard to come by" at some time in the future...


and then suddenly Barrack Obama got elected and suddenly 'brass started being hard to come by".....

for the last 7 years, I haven't had to deal with any brass "shortage" whatsoever.... so I guess the last laugh is on me...

I've got plenty of it.... and my way of doing it, gives it a long long life span, with reliable service....

40 and 50 firings on a case is pretty common... and there would be more, if I didn't have such a stock pile of brass.... and its free since most is range brass... and I do have times I come across some good buys on used brass....

I've also learned not feeling the need to load rounds to their peak velocity, can also play plenty of dividends on brass life...

loose primer pockets become a real rarity...


but to each there own... I've been criticized for my concepts on routine maintenance of stuff a lot...and even been given what the author intended as some sort of slander " bet he's former military, hence wasteful"... and then called "cheap" or tight wad...

whatever... but my stuff lasts a long time, because I take care of it, or take the extra time....minus used brass ( which there hasn't been much of) I haven't had to purchase hardly any brass in 10 plus years...yet I've got a gallon container about 95% full of spent primers... so I gather I get out and shoot once in a while...

no brass shortages at all experienced at my place.....

I started to anneal after every firing as someone else suggested. So far, so good.

The only ones I keep track of are belted magnum rounds, everything else I run until the neck splits or the primer pockets are loose.

I pitch them when the pockets get loose or I split a neck

Not to argue nor nor discredit.

IMO the best result of recording firings is having a decent idea of how many rounds have been shot in a barrel.

I have one rifle that I have NO idea how many rounds have been shot thru it. The accuracy is OK but noticeably less than the first 1000.


Jerry

If accuracy isn't what you expect, or need it is time to do something regardless of round count.

I think you missed 2 points.

1. Accuracy is OK (for hunting)

2. If I'd kept a record I'd know how many rounds have been thru the barrel.


Jerry

I don't but I am also the dumbazz that shoots three shot groups at a hundred yards and is good to go.

+1 to what EdM says, good enough for me too.

Thanks for the input guys! Annealing looks like a good idea and I'll incorporate that into my routine. Already been watching some videos an the importance of not letting the brass burn orange.

I also like the idea of the zip-lock bag routine. I have a few plastic jars around and would certainly help keep things organized and an easy way to keep track of the number of firings.

Based on the responses, loose primer pockets and split necks appear to be where problems are. Thanks for making that clear.

Keeping track of number of firings is not difficult.
You don't have to load ALL of your brass at once.
With a large batch, you can keep some new or once fired for hunting and run the rest till they fail.
Make the number of firings part of your lot number.
You don't have to anneal hardly ever if you full length size to just fit the chamber to be fired in.
Keeping info in three ring binder data logs is informative.
Watch for failures as you rework your brass.
Of course if you just want to blow thru a bunch of oversize magazines, forget paying tooooo much attention.
jmho
Tim

Not quite. The neck gets worked the same either way.

One thing I do for most bolt rifles is sort the cases by neck concentricity aka uniform neck wall thickness. Those with too much variation are separated from the main lot although they are kept with that lot. Depending on brand name and actual lot of brass from the manufacturer culls run from 0% to maybe 10-15%.

Anyway, those are the red headed step children and get no love at all. Never cleaned, never annealed, never trimmed unless they really need it. I just shoot them until they fail. Loads in those cases aren't really inaccurate per se, at least I can't tell the difference from a field position, but they can mess up an otherwise nice benched group if left unsorted.

My three old military rifles don't get this treatment, nor does the old .30-30 Marlin but the scoped modern rifles definitely show a little to a lot of benefit from sorting.

this thread has made me feel better. I have never counted, but have never confessed it until this moment.

is this how it is at AA meetings?

Shane: "hi, I'm Shane, and I don't count my case loadings"

therapy group: "hi Shane"

I keep track. Does it matter? I don't know. I keep 50 round boxes labeled with the number of firings of the brass. When I load I tend to load all from a single box so they are all 1x, 2x fired or whatever. It's certainly not hard and I don't feel it adds to the level of effort at all. Once I have a better feel for when failures start to occur I'll know better when to retire brass.

Same here. I figure if it'll do it three times, that's the most I'm gonna get at a game animal. Hasn't failed yet. I do, however, try to keep track of times fired on my brass but nothing elaborate.

Some people count case firings.
Some keep round count to determine barrel life.
Some keep bullet count to see what they shoot the most and others count nothing and couldn't care less about any of it.
Democracy is wonderful.

I've kept track of brass fire-count for our rifles for over thirty years. Not so,with handguns. memtb

I tried...but lost count...every time. this thread makes me feel better.

Mathman
Ref annealing, I did not say you never will need to anneal with the sizing to chamber method, but I have brass that has gone up to 20 firings with this method without annealing and without failures along the way.

To me, it makes sense and seems to be the case that sizing to just fitting the chamber results in less stretching.
If you size to a sloppy fit, brass does not last long.

As we all know, each gun is a specific issue and each hand loader does things his own way because he is happy with the results.

jmho
Tim