9mm brass

**Gunowner99** · March 11th, 2015, 09:11 AM

Maybe headstamp will be an indicator?

**bogey1** · March 11th, 2015, 09:14 AM

Originally Posted by Gunowner99

Maybe headstamp will be an indicator?

That too.

**Gunowner99** · March 11th, 2015, 09:18 AM

Berdan = which manufacturers in general?

**Nate7667** · March 11th, 2015, 09:47 AM

99.99% of all BRASS cases you will come across will be Boxer primed brass and you will be fine. Berdan primed cases are typically steel, which are not worth the trouble to reload, throw them away.
If you are unsure of the head stamp, take a flash light and look inside the case while sorting through range pick-ups.
You want to look for this, Berdan on the left, Boxer on the right. Throw any of the cases on the left into a bucket and save them for scrap value.

**bogey1** · March 11th, 2015, 09:59 AM

Originally Posted by Gunowner99

Berdan = which manufacturers in general?

I found one of mine..

**Gunowner99** · March 11th, 2015, 10:07 AM

Pictures going up on bench. Thanks!

**Fred762** · March 11th, 2015, 10:14 AM

Originally Posted by joeyj

I new at reloading. I'm sure I picked up somebody else brass along the way. I look a every case. What else should I look for besides splits and bulges?

Mic the diameter of the cases just out past the extractor groove..some will be too big to resize easily..I find that about 2% of cases are waaay outside the normal size and thus do not resize back to "factory specs". I throw out anything over ~5/1000ths bigger than loaded rounds..use a manual for the measurements, or just measure 5 different brands of 9mm and average them. I'm not where my reloading stuff is, to give u the numbers. Trial and error with yer particular die setup will show you which case sizes are fit to reload.

The problem is that 9x19mm is tapered and sometimes the cases "bulge" out a bit at the groove..they can stick in the chamber and then you have a live round, but the slide may NOT be fully home..ie a jam w a live round.
I suspect most "bulged cases" have been fired in guns with very loose chambers..like carbines OR smgs.. fyi You can get some to resize IF you buy an "undersized" 9mm resizing die..I got one. It seems to bring most 9mm cases back to spec bks it seems to resize all the way down to the groove. Chek it out

The other things to watch for:
1. make sure you do not have cases from .380 or some other rare 9mm caliber, like 9mm largo etc..if in doubt, measure them as comp to factory 9mm luger cases..

2. make sure to LOOK into the case mouth to see that they are BOXER primed. 2 tiny holes= berdan and they will break yer decapping pines asap. BTW I have run across several 9mmx19 cases of BRASS which were berdan, so steel is not always present. I do not reload steel even if it is boxer!!

See my post here: http://forum.pafoa.org/ammunition-re...ps-tricks.html

**Brick** · March 11th, 2015, 06:09 PM

Here's a resource to help you identify headstamps.

http://cartridgecollectors.org/?page=headstampcodes

For example the FNM headstmp above is identified with 3 possibilities:

FNM Fábrica Nacional de Municiones, Santa Fe, México (near Mexico City) 3
FNM Fábrica Nacional de Munições de Armas Ligeiras, Chelas, Portugal 1
FNM Unknown Factory, Mexico

**Yoder** · March 14th, 2015, 11:16 PM

If it's 9mm, brass, not cracked and boxer primed in my book it's good. When I first started reloading I separated the brass by the number of times it was reloaded. I got up to 5x and realized it doesn't matter. When it cracks I throw it out. I have a 5 gallon bucket full. To sit and measure each and every piece of brass for a bulge seems like a waste of time to me. I have never had a single round of 9mm not chamber correctly in any of my guns out of at least 30k rounds. All my brass is stuff picked up at the range. Most dangerous thin is the wrong caliber. .380 and 9x18 is a giant pain in the ass.