I got a problem but I have never run into before and I am baffled. I need help PLEASE!

[Uncle Grinch]

After many firings and resizing, brass gets work hardened and needs to be annealed to restore its elasticity.

 

[greg vess]

After many firings and resizing, brass gets work hardened and needs to be annealed to restore its elasticity.

Well he claims the site where he bought it said once fired brass. However, it looks to be brass picked up off a range. It was dirty as all get out and starting to turn black in places. I am just about ready to throw in the towel because I have had two cases get stuck in the die and that just isn't any fun. Out of the eight or nine years of reloading I have had one case get stuck. I have had two in the same 100 pieces I am fooling with out of his and broke a zip spindle, chipped a ball expander and destroyed the deprimer pin and I just replaced it. It's definitely suspect brass that's for sure. It's hard as hell to size and is just not good brass as a whole.

 

[BHPSteel]

"Once fired brass" is usually meaningless. It's been fired. If it's been sitting around on an outdoor range, it might have been fired once (or 20 times) and all the tarnish on there is just down to nobody having picked it up in 3 months. Whoever collects it has no idea how many times it might have been reloaded (although it probably hasn't been more than a few times)

If it has been sitting on a range, there's a good chance that spent primers will be harder to remove.

Question - what kind of processing have you done to the brass before it gets anywhere near your press?

 

[greg vess]

Well after adjusting the die and cleaning it real good it seems to be doing ok. I just know spent a couple hours cleaning, adjusting and loading some of the brass that I actually did get sized right. I still have to go back and resized a good size bag of already prepped brass so it better to do that now while my zip spindle and ball expander is out and ordered. I would still be doing it but I ran out of case lube. This venture has been one thing after another.
After I figured out my die adjustment was off I had three cases stick in a row. So after some crude explicit words I cleaned and polished the inside of the die and straighted that out real nice. Now just to get some case lube in so I can continue.

 

[41mag]

Some of that brass may be a problem it seems. Sounds like it may not be worth the extra hassle. (Sometimes the ‘savings’ aren’t really a saving process.)
I only load pistol/handgun rounds ….. but I am just going to stick with my current, tried and true process that I have always used.
Good luck…I am going to continue to follow and I hope things stay straightened out for you.

 

[Cartman]

For years I have been loading 223 on a dedicated Dillon S1050. The brass I get all free from my buddy that has access to several outdoor ranges in Wisconsin and he just sends my random boxes full of 223 cases. So far I have never experienced anything like the OP stated. I have never annealed the first piece. I wet tumble, size, trim, wet tumble again, then load. This process has worked flawless for me. I do occasionally run into a Berdan primer and I just toss them. Thankfully I run Squirrel Daddy decapping pins. It’s very very rare they break.

 

[Freshly Minted Georgian!]

Glad you figured it out. I’ve seen a similar problem only one time in 40 years of reloading and it ended up being that a newer reloader got it in his head that he needed to neck turn the brass to uniform up the brass thickness. Got a bit overzealous, removed a couple thou more than he should have, then of course after sizing the neck hadn’t been squeezed quite far enough to grip a bullet firmly. Easy solution though, toss the brass and stop neck turning it. I’ve loaded hundreds of thousands of 223 over the years and the only brass wear related problems I’ve seen are cracking at the case mouth and primer pocket expansion. In both instances, trash it and move on. 223 is cheap and plentiful, not worth taking a ton of time to mess with.