How do you manage your brass?

[Ga6570]

So you have 100 pieces of new unfired meticulously prepped brass. You decide to shoot two 10 shot ladder tests for two different powders. You load up and shoot them. You then decide to do two more ladder tests for two more different powders. What do you do? Load up 20 of the unfired pieces or do you prep the 20 you just fired to reload? How do you go through your brass?

i sort my brass in clean empty jar top nut containers from Costco (after I eat the nuts!)

 

[misterc01]

Mine all stay in 100 round lots. For testing, the powder, primers and bullets are all the same, then I only the change seating depth for the Seating Depth test.
I do not do a seating depth or ladder test with virgin brass as it will be different than my once or more fired brass.

 

[John Klingenberg]

i sort my brass in clean empty jar top nut containers from Costco (after I eat the nuts!)

I think when they say gun nuts they're on to something. I myself use those same awesome clear nut jugs. I think I've seen 20 posts on here with the same jugs in the background.

 

[brant89]

I do seating depth, MAX pressure, and velocity testing with virgin brass. Then I do powder work up with the once fired brass. I also keep all my brass separated in 50 round boxes that never get mixed, and mark resizing count in Roman numerals on a piece of tape stuck to the inside of the lid. Every time I trim to length I use a red pen for the numeral so I can keep track of trimmings as well.

 

[milo-2]

If I have new brass, I would also have a new barrel. Maybe I should not be here because 100 pcs of brass is far too low of a number for me. So I have to fire all my brass, regardless.
I am going to kill 2 birds here, fire my brass plus break in the barrel, and for the most part have a load before the barrel speeds up. You do this long enough, it becomes easier to project what will happen.
Random numbers here, just say you expect 2925fps from your combination of barrel and components after barrel beak in and all brass is fired. It can be as easy as loading for 2875fps, heck, you may not have to alter one thing.
Just say now you do have make an adjustment to your powder charge, what percentage difference will it end up being with fired brass. It is going to be minimal, your seat depth is not going to change here. Process your fired brass, load 10 of your existing load and go test, both for velocity and group size, make the adjustment now if needed.
Firing the same 10 pcs of brass 6 times just to find a load means when you are done, you now only have 90 pcs to fire till those 90 have 6 firings on them, if we are talking pure accuracy standpoint.
Finding a load with new is not some insurmountable problem. Question, what happens if you do not have your load in 100 test rds with your 10 pcs of brass, all your brass would have been fired by now.

 

[FEENIX]

Once prepped, I track my brass as new/virgin (resized), X-fired, and from which rifle.

 

[Jud96]

I would shoot all of the virgin brass before reloading any of the once fired brass. I use virgin brass to roughly find my powder charge. In my experience, once fired brass will gain 20+ FPS with the same load as virgin brass. So the load you find with virgin brass might be 0.3-0.5gr lighter with once fired brass to reach the same node. Seating depth can be found with virgin or fired brass.

 

[Longtine88]

For my hunting rifles that don't have large volumes of shots put through them i'll do load development with new brass and then hunt with that load in new brass. Once I get close to running out of virgin brass I'll go back to the range and check velocity in once fired brass and tweak the load a bit if necessary to find the accuracy node.

My latest rifle is a 6.5x284 and I've broken in the barrel, done seating tests and found a 0.25 MOA load in 34 shots. The remaining 66 pieces of virgin brass will use this load for the time being.

I do the same as Hugh. Hunting rifles I use new brass on load development and hunting. After I get a heap or 200 or so I then switch and verify load development on the once fired and start over.

 

[Lenny Foffa]

This is very Interesting guys. I separate all brass by weight , after all prepping is complete. For Hunting loads its Win .270 Win Brass . 186.0 to 186.2; then 186.3 to 186.5 ; Then 186.6 to 186.9. I have never noticed a difference, in group size , weather the brass is new , or has been fired 5 times. I get happy with sub MOA , 3 shot groups in a light weight deer rifle. For target guns I separate by 1/10th after all prepping is done. I will pay much closer attention.