New Brass

[Cavallino]

Newbie reloader question here. How many reloads should I get from brass,,, First, starting with new Winchester or Lapua brand .308,,,, Second, starting out with once fired Lake City .308. Will be full length re-sizing each time, Winchester/Lapua in Rem 700 5R bolt gun, Lake City in LR308.

Thanks for the info.

[steve4102]

Depends on your load and your rifle. High pressure loads tend to reduce brass life, not always.

Are you going to shoot them and reload them until they become work hardened and split, or are you going to anneal them somewhere in between.

Expensive brass like Lapua I would anneal and take good care of. The range and Win stuff maybe, maybe not.

To answer your question, duno, it all depends on you and what you plan to load and how you want to process your fired brass.

[Cavallino]

Was going to stick close to Fed GMM velocity with 168 gr Sierra Match King. Too new to try annealing,, well,, maybe not I've done similar processes with metal work,, just not anything firearms related. Mostly looking for some general idea about how many reload cycles I can figure on using medium pressure loads, full length size each time, trim every two or three times. I know Lapua cases come annealed from the get, no idea how often, after how many cycles, I should anneal them (or have them annealed) again.

[woolleyworm]

Originally Posted by Cavallino

Was going to stick close to Fed GMM velocity with 168 gr Sierra Match King. Too new to try annealing,, well,, maybe not I've done similar processes with metal work,, just not anything firearms related. Mostly looking for some general idea about how many reload cycles I can figure on using medium pressure loads, full length size each time, trim every two or three times. I know Lapua cases come annealed from the get, no idea how often, after how many cycles, I should anneal them (or have them annealed) again.

Welcome to TFF and given mid range loads, probably 6-8 times without annealing. Most quality rifle brass if annealed from the factory, including military.

[aa1911]

Lake City is great stuff, got tons of older stuff including match brass that has held up quite well. in my M1A gas gun, 3-4 reloads is about max, bolt gun or SS, etc many more reloads.

Midway has a bunch of lake city for good prices (new unprimed also)

[soundguy]

i generally get a minimum of 5 with no annealing.

but I DO trim each time.. or at least chuck them in the trimmer, that way they are always uniform length for crimping.

ps.. you will get more life out of the brass if you go with very mild roll crimp, vs too much roll crimp.

OR a LFC.. etc.

[musketshooter]

Fired machine gun brass can only be loaded a couple of times.

[soundguy]

why?