This month's issue of Shooting Times has a very interesting article on reloading older brass and what to look for in regards to safety.. i.e. case and neck splits. Apparently storage conditions have a lot to do with the quality of brass after a number of years of non use. It gives a good all around picture of the materials that go into making brass and how they change somewhat over the years of storage.
Reloading old Brass
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cloverleaf
Handloader
- Sep 10, 2006
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Hmmm- I dont have any brass newer than 10 years old. May have to check it out 
. CL
. CLI still have several hundred WW2 issue 30-06 cases, mostly LC 43 IIRC. I haven't needed to use them so they've been stored in my shed with all the other non-perishable loading components. Powder is stored in a separate shed in a running refrigerator. What few primers I have are in the house.
If I do anything with that 06 brass, I'll anneal the necks prior to loading. I also have a couple hundred LC51 30-06 I have yet to deprime. That's in the time frame of are the primers corrosive or not. There's some doubt on 06 ammo and the changeover ran from 1951 to as late as 1953. There was even a run of 06 match brass sometime in the 1970s IIRC that had corrosive primers. They were made up for a special match if memory serves.
Paul B.
If I do anything with that 06 brass, I'll anneal the necks prior to loading. I also have a couple hundred LC51 30-06 I have yet to deprime. That's in the time frame of are the primers corrosive or not. There's some doubt on 06 ammo and the changeover ran from 1951 to as late as 1953. There was even a run of 06 match brass sometime in the 1970s IIRC that had corrosive primers. They were made up for a special match if memory serves.
Paul B.
PJ Do you use the "candle method" to anneal the neck/shoulder area? I've never done any kind of annealing, ha, but I always go over my brass before reloading. Also, after they are loaded! Ex: I had some "once fired" Federal 7mm Rem Mag loaded with a sort of compressed load ( 175 SBT/R33) and about a week later, many had a "split" right down the side! Arrgh! I can't say Federal brass has ever been a favorite of mine, for anything.
