Brass life depends on how you care for it, how it was fabricated and how it was designed and of course how you load it. Commercial brass is generally not designed for long case life.


I had contacts at Remington and Winchester over the years and both considered 5 to 7 rounds to be the life of their center fire rifle brass.


I noted a much shorter life from Federal brass which was confirmed was a result of their fabrications by Federal engineers who stopped by the National High Power Rifle Championships back in the 80s and I learned from them that their case draw procedures present a condition that while safe to fire initially do not lend themselves to sustained reloadings because the primer pockets open quickly which is evidenced when new primers are inserted. My rule on Federal is load it twice and forget it.



Cases fail for three reasons, the necks crack and the primer pockets loosen up and the dimensions of SAAMI chambers allow for expansions that when FL resized shorten your case life which will give you incipient separation failures. You can continue to load loose primer pockets at the expense of sustaining gas leakage around the primers which will flame cut your bolt face.


These failures can be mitigated by mating dies to chambers but the best bet is if you keep a rifle long enough to shoot out the barrel and replace it with a new barrel and have a chamber cut that does not allow a new cartridge case to expand over .002" in any direction on firing. I call this the 222 rule which i.e. the bases do not expand over .002", the necks do not expand over .002" and the rifle is headspaced tightly so the shoulder does not go over .002" forward on firing.

This begs the question why? Cases are expensive these days.

SAAMI specs for 30.06 chambers are allowed to expand outwards and give birth to cases with base dimension of .473 (I have miced fired cases at .475 in factory 30.06 rifles. If you measure the base of a commercial or gov't 30.06 case .200 up from the case rim it should be .465" diameter. Necks have a similar expansion which stretches them way further than needed.

My two custom reamers in 30.06 cut a .4675 base dimension or a .469 base dimension and the necks at .3375. Thus when a new unfired round is inserted and fired the cases expand a tad and spring back to almost unfired conditions. Thus my chambers will accept any commercial ammunition made but are designed to increase its useful life by being able to reload it multiple times.

What does this do? How is it done?

I dedicated 500 cases for my No1 Course Gun (Mod 70 Win Target in 30.06) in 1982 time frame. I shot out the first barrel with them, replaced that barrel and shot out a second barrel and replaced that and it has over 2000 rounds on it now. None of the cases show any signs of starting to fail.

With the cost of ammo these days you need to reload and be aware of how you can increase your brass life. To that end I will post a thread shortly on how to stress relieve necks and shoulders to achieve a much longer life in those areas.


The nicest brass I ever loaded (for a friend) was DWM, the necks were extremely uniform and the primer pockets were very tight on fired cases.


Many highpower competitors use Lapua. I personally do not for the following reasons.


The brass that will hold up the longest are the M72 30.06 Match and the M118/M118LR 7.62 match cases. The heads on the military cases have a hardness gradient callout on the drawings and the heads have to be "hard" to sustain the extraction forces of MGs.

When the gov't arsenals start drawing cases on a production line a case is a case in the beginning stages so it all has hard heads. Thus the ball/tracer/AP/Match all start life equally.


There is a neck wall tolerance on ball brass that is larger than match brass but dimensionally they are equal. One has the primer's crimped in and the MATCH does not.


I have conducted sustained loading tests and I have reloaded M118 Match cases 75 and 90 times. I have one M72 match case I have loaded 157 times and the primer pocket is still snug.


Yogi Berra had a famous quote I like to use, "You don't know what you don't know till you know what you don't know." and Yogi would have been a prime candidate to learn reloading.

Just wondering do any of you guys use a chronograph or have access to one? If so advise and I will post so help for using them as well.