The UK's Finest Independent Forum for Shooters and Gun Owners. Est 2010.

how long does your .38/357 brass last ? how times do you reload them before chucking away

If anything I would expect it to be lost as opposed to chucked away, we have .357 bras that has numerous loadings and still going strong however I do see the occasional split from the neck back that means discarding the brass. Off the top of my head expect 20+ firings however you could probably double that and a bit more.

I'm still using the .357 brass I had when we had real pistols..!! So over 20 years, and reloaded many, many times... probably 75 times.

Saying that, its always been with very light target loads... 3.0 gns of bullseye in the days of the revolver, 3.8 gns of N320 nowadays in the LBR or underlever.
They are on their last legs though, primer pockets getting loose and the occasional split neck so as they get fired they now get binned. Bought 500 new starline to replace them.

thats good then ,i am using 3.5gr of bulleye,158 gr swc in .38 cases

I'm still using Starline (the best pistol brass!) 44mag I bought back from the US in 2012. According to my records the current 100 cases I'm using will have had at least 60-80 reloads, I've only lost 2 to a couple of small neck splits. Good news is I still have about another 400 sitting in the box :)

Compare that to the PPU I bought from Kranks which lasted a whole 2 reloads before I lost 3 cases with fairly large neck splits and one very worrying side wall split, the rest went into the bin. I only use very mild loads, 5.4gr of Titegroup or 6gr of Nobel GM3.

going to try 148gr wad cutters next see how they go with bulleye

ballkeeper wrote:going to try 148gr wad cutters next see how they go with bulleye

If you're going to use the hollow based wadcutters they are usually swaged with soft lead. It's important to keep the loads low to prevent the skirts being torn off.

these are the soild base one, 3.1 grs of bulleye the plan

Since you're using bullseye powder the loads will be quite light. I would only bin the brass if you see splits in the case necks.

WelshShooter wrote:Since you're using bullseye powder the loads will be quite light. I would only bin the brass if you see splits in the case necks.

thanks ,have bin 2 so far as had tiny spilt