Cut Away 308 Brass

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I decided to do a cut away on Hornady .308 brass. Three times fired. The reason being I wanted to see what it looked like for a paper clip test. After only being fired three times there is no damage at all. I thought there would be something.

This piece of brass was loaded with 4895. 41.6, 41.8, and 42.0gr

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There should be no damage after a whole bunch of loadings is the sizing die is set properly for your rifle, but you can get case head separation after a very few loadings if it is not. Been there, done that, don't want to do it again.

edit: I have also found with 308 that you can shine a light down into the case and look for a shadow ring that the groove casts.
 
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In addition to above about the dies...be sure to lube the cases, inside the neck too. If the chamber is good ( not too loose) and your loads arent excessively hot....308 from a bolt gun will get several loadings. Neck sizing will help keep from overworking the brass too.
 
I have been reloading 308 for a little over a year. I full length size the brass. (my preference) and never have issues. I did the cut away more for curiosity then anything else. Most things that I have read say you only get about 5 reloads out of most brass. If that is true you think you would start to see some wear after three either the neck itself or near the head. I have seen neither.
 
In the past most people followed the old, screw the die down and add 1/2 turn, for a full SAAMI spec resize. While in the last few years, we have learned to just bump back the case .002 to .005. This new way to resize has contributed the most to making brass life longer, the brass is worked very little. Using this technique I have made 308 brass last 5 to 6 reloading through a gas gun.
 
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What are you firing these in? Bolt or gas gun?

I usually toss my brass after 4 firings in my gas guns to err on the side of caution, although some brass I could have gotten more out if.

Ive recently had issues with Hornady '06 in my Garand..1st time fired brass cracking axially on mild loads.

CBC brass, GGG (lithiuanian milsurp) has lasted the longest. Lake City has seperated on 4th firing in my M1A.

If you have a mix of gas and bolt, you could cycle your brass..x firings in gas then switch it to bolt gun duty and get the most out of it.
 
Shooting out of a Rem. 700 bolt. So far I have only used 4064 and 4895 powder. 168gr and 175gr bullets different mfgs. I have never made a "hot load" just do not see any reason to do so.
 
About 5 firings from semi auto...... Full resize the brass, inspect, and if it looks good, brass should be good to go for several bolt gun firings.
 
I used to shoot my 243 M70 quite a bit but did not have a lot of brass for it. I set my sizing die by trial and error since I was only loading 243 for this one rifle. I got a case that was a bit too long to seat easily in the chamber and started bumping the shoulder back just a very small bit at a time until it would just seat with minimum effort. No telling how many times I loaded some of those cases without any case separations. I did anneal the necks occasionally so the necks would not split.

I load for a whole bunch of 308 rifles and have a whole bunch of 308 brass, so I size so they all will fit in any of my rifles and retire cases after a few loadings. I did get one case head separation when shooting one of my reloads out of my Sig. I checked the rest of the cases in that batch and wound up retiring them.
 
I used to shoot my 243 M70 quite a bit but did not have a lot of brass for it. I set my sizing die by trial and error since I was only loading 243 for this one rifle. I got a case that was a bit too long to seat easily in the chamber and started bumping the shoulder back just a very small bit at a time until it would just seat with minimum effort. No telling how many times I loaded some of those cases without any case separations. I did anneal the necks occasionally so the necks would not split.
I did a similar thing with my 223 brass. I have the Redding competition shellholders, and I full length resized several cases with each shellholder in the set, and found that with the +0.010" shellholder, all of the brass would chamber in all of my ARs. I've started using the +0.006" shellholder routinely to size all of my brass. This should limit the amount of stretch each time it is fired.
 
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