Conversation With Starline Brass Tech Sup't Today

The Rossi Model R92, a lightweight carbine for Cowboy Action, hunting, or plinking! Includes Rossi manufactured Interarms, Navy Arms, and Puma trade names.
Archer
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Re: Conversation With Starline Brass Tech Sup't Today

Post by Archer »

I've run quite a few .44 Mag hot loads out of a Winchester 94 reloading the same brass without issues.
I have NOT run enough loads out of a Rossi either in .44 Mag or .357 Mag to know how well the brass holds up.
I have generally been a fan of Winchester and Federal brass and I typically will buy a supply of factory rounds to get the brass rather than starting with new brass since the cost savings assembling ammo from scratch vs. buying factory is somewhat minimal. New unfired Winchester brass used to be cost effective but since they've started selling it by the 50 or the 100 pack instead of 'bulk' the cost has gone way up.

With respect to case head separation or case wall point failure, I have had very little experience with this seeing perhaps one of each in I have no idea how many thousands of reloads. When reloading bottle necked rounds I use a 'feeler' or 'scratcher' made out of a paper clip bent into a L with the short leg designed to be inserted into the case to check for the case wall thinning. If the clip catches when run up from the base of the cartridge case, it indicates the case wall is thinning and I discard the case as scrap brass. I typically check every 90 or 120 degrees around the case. This has worked well with several thousands of .308, .30-06 and .30-30s and is the same method I used for other bottle necked cartridges/calibers. I have discarded hundreds to thousands of cases in this manner and when spot checking these cases by sectioning them the thinning of the case wall is clearly evident so I'm catching them before they become problematical. Maybe I might get another load or two out of some of them but how do you tell which ones have another safe load in them vs. the ones that are going to become mini plasma cutters in your chamber? Better safe than sorry.

I have checked straight walled cases (for the magnums only) in the same way, not nearly in the same quantities, but given the comments from oneoff I suspect that method MIGHT work. I have usually had straight walled cases fail by cracking at the case mouth much more often than by case head seperation or point failure of the case wall.

In addition to the above feeler checker, I have seen it recommended that bottle necked rifle cases be tossed before being trimmed 5 times.
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