I never mix brass when cleaning.
Me neither
I do, but normally I mix obvious mismatches. Part of that is that I generally don't have large batches of brass to clean. It'll be 20 of this and 50 of that-- of themselves, not worth the wear on the cleaner.
A typical mix might be 25 30-06 and 25 30-30 and 50 45 ACP. There's no doubt about what's what. Another batch might be 50 223 and 200 9mm. Again, no problems. If I have to look at the headstamp to be sure, then it's too close. For instance, I don't mix 25-06 and 30-06.
Where I've gotten into trouble is when I'm cleaning a batch of once-fired and someone's mixed a few 9mm's in with the 45's. In this past instance, my sons brought me a pile of range sweepings that probably included God-knows-what. I had just received 100 rounds of Lake City 30-06 brass and wanted something to top off the batch.
Note to self: stop trusting the kids' range sweepings.
So much of what I shoot is small batches. With my deer rifles, I'll start off with one box of 50, shoot half, and then clean and reload it while I'm shooting the remaining 25. It's all the same recipe and I'll keep going like that until I get neck splits. With annealing, I've got rounds that have lasted since 2002.
