How Do I Save Money On AMMO?

Thanks! I’ll check them out Monday morning when I dunno the brass.

Grabbed the 9mm Bullets, they look great!
Also dumped the Misc Brass I was tumbling and started up some more of it. Tell me this stuff isn’t Pretty!

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It’s one of the things we need to teach - sorting brass…and checking it for flaws - head stamps - good brass - bad brass

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My goto for bad brass is any head stamp with a palm tree on it is bad. :wink:

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Didn’t know what you meant and looked it up. Saudi Brass interesting, also ran across a ebook explaining all kinds of head stamps.

https://books.google.com/books?id=THQ1iG8fSG8C&pg=PT265&lpg=PT265&dq=palm+tree+head+stamp&source=bl&ots=bfdoUIL4YH&sig=AIcyYT-g21lmkey8CMBnPrL9Ck4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjZxY7-jLvUAhVJ94MKHeU-C1YQ6AEIOTAG#v=onepage&q=palm%20tree%20head%20stamp&f=false

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I am woefully unimpressed with the tolerances of Aguila brass out of Mexico and Perfecta brass out of Fiocchi UK - I typically don’t use them.

Mostly, I use Speer, Federal and Remington brass -
New Speer comes off the range EXTREMELY clean - they use good powder and primers.
Remington has issues with primer pocket edge flares but not as bad as Win and I like the weight of their brass and the slight bevels they add. I see a wide variance on how clean their powder burns new - some cases come new off the range pretty clean - some do not.

I use Winchester but it always comes fresh off the range very dirty and with the worst primer hole edge flares from their stamping process that needs to be reamed out to even clean the inside of the case well enough to do a sold inspection for head crack & separation issues. Win brass primers also leave a heavier residue in the primer pocket.

GECO out of Germany is good but realize the primer hole - while perfectly centered & clean - is done to metric spec and ever so slightly smaller than standard. This is a heavier quality brass that will take more reloads before wearing out.

PPU seems pretty tight out of Europe and I have reloaded with it on occasion.

There is one brass I find on very rare occasion that has a head stamp symbol of a plus sign in a circle. I typically crush every one of these that comes across my bench as the primers and cases stick in my equipment 100% - these cases are bad news.

If you have guessed that I sort brass and reload in batches of only one headstamp at a time - yes - I do that. Gives you a more consistent load and you can weight rounds to find mistakes and expect the cases to be closer in weight than if you used different headstamps in a run.

These observations hold for 9mm and .40 S&W

The plus sign and a circle indicates it is NATO spec which means that the primer is crimped in. When you remove the primer it usually leaves a burr that makes it almost impossible to seat a new primer. The easiest way to fix this is with a primer pocket swagger tool or you can try to cut a chamfer with a inside neck reamer tool.

They are pretty good pieces of brass.

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I went to my tire store and offered what they get when they take it for scrap;10 cents a pound. Got three buckets worth and didn’t discover all of the iron weights intermixed. Bumped up my cost for the lead quite a bit. My mistake can be a warning for all.

They won’t sort it for you and don’t typically let you sort through it for yourself - You get a mixed bag that is often 1/3rd to 2/3rds iron wheel weights…

I’d thought to possibly make a field trip to an auto salvage yard to pry them off old cars first hand and then only come away with lead weights and lead battery cable ends. - a future project.

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