25 wssm Factory Brass Cracking

Annealing will not fix the damage done in manufacture.
It's obvious with WSSM that they just cut down WSM cases, and then formed shoulders/necks. That's why necks are 19 to 24thou (depending on cal). I believe they don't go through all the extra annealing to form factory ammo, as it's disposable. Always has been.

With their reloading brass, I believe they do the extra annealing with forming. The reloading brass IS better. It IS for reloading.

Brass I used was bagged brass for reloading.

Mikecr said:

Annealing will not fix the damage done in manufacture.
It's obvious with WSSM that they just cut down WSM cases, and then formed shoulders/necks. That's why necks are 19 to 24thou (depending on cal). I believe they don't go through all the extra annealing to form factory ammo, as it's disposable. Always has been.

With their reloading brass, I believe they do the extra annealing with forming. The reloading brass IS better. It IS for reloading.

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Mikecr,

So if 25WSM cases (that have no splits) were neck turned down to about .012", annealed, sized, and then reloaded all would be good?

PddPdd said:

Mikecr,

So if 25WSM cases (that have no splits) were neck turned down to about .012", annealed, sized, and then reloaded all would be good?

Click to expand...

Yes. This is just what I do.
I must have been real lucky, as I have not run into splits with Win reloading WSSM cases.
I've measured some defects here & there, mostly thickness variance, & funny webs/flash holes. But with the brass being relatively cheap, I just pick diamonds out of the rough.

For instance with a 26wssm Imp (wildcat), I measured and pulled ~120 cases from a pile of ~1,000 cases. These weighed the same and matched in neck thickness and having zero thickness variance. I turned and prepped them, including deep body dip annealing. Fired formed them 3 times with no sizing and measured H2O capacities. Here I separated out ~80 that exactly matched in capacity.
Of those, I used 50 for load development, and through 2.5 barrels, 80+ reloads on them.
During this, I sold off that batch of 24wssm brass, which was 3,000 cases (paid for the gun build).
I then picked up 25wssm brass, several thousand, and started measuring through them in case I ever need them.
No problems, but I won't need them.

The original 50 cases will last through my lifetime.
So this is why I say it's relatively cheap. Hell If I paid $10/pc and threw away most, I would still get my money back on it. That is why I chose the WSSM case instead of 260 cases for the same capacity (260AI cap).