Brass is brass, right?

[leverjc]

kissmybrass, I am glad you brought up annealing brass. I anneal my bottle neck rifle brass but never thought of annealing pistol brass. I am relatively new to loading .357 (maybe 1000 rounds) and haven't had a problem yet with any case splitting. I have had some case splitting when I was fooling around loading 45 super. Your question had me do some research about it and the majority of the opinions I looked at thought it would not be worth the effort to anneal pistol brass. Some people thought it would even be detrimental because it would make the brass to soft to hold a good crimp and it would be to hard not to make the whole case soft.

I would like to hear from people that have more experience than I do.

[BigAl52]

In 40 years plus of reloading the only brass I annealed was for the Sharps in 45-100. Ive never annealed any pistol brass and the only brass in pistol that have cracked for me is the nickel plated 357 and 38 special cases. Other than that no issues.

[Rifletom]

In 40 years plus of reloading the only brass I annealed was for the Sharps in 45-100. Ive never annealed any pistol brass and the only brass in pistol that have cracked for me is the nickel plated 357 and 38 special cases. Other than that no issues.

Ditto on the pistol brass.

[Headhog]

I agree with BigAl and RT. Only nickel plated 38 Spl and 357 Mag seem to split. I've had 45 ACP split on me, but that was after about 20 reloads.

Paul

[Kissmybrass]

In 40 years plus of reloading the only brass I annealed was for the Sharps in 45-100. Ive never annealed any pistol brass and the only brass in pistol that have cracked for me is the nickel plated 357 and 38 special cases. Other than that no issues.

Great to know! (one less thing I gotta worry about)

[Kissmybrass]

kissmybrass, I am glad you brought up annealing brass. I anneal my bottle neck rifle brass but never thought of annealing pistol brass. I am relatively new to loading .357 (maybe 1000 rounds) and haven't had a problem yet with any case splitting. I have had some case splitting when I was fooling around loading 45 super. Your question had me do some research about it and the majority of the opinions I looked at thought it would not be worth the effort to anneal pistol brass. Some people thought it would even be detrimental because it would make the brass to soft to hold a good crimp and it would be to hard not to make the whole case soft.

I would like to hear from people that have more experience than I do.

Thanks for the feedback Lever!

[Sir Henry]

I agree with BigAl and RT. Only nickel plated 38 Spl and 357 Mag seem to split. I've had 45 ACP split on me, but that was after about 20 reloads.

Paul

That is a lot of reloads. I’ve reloaded a lot of range pickup brass and have no idea how many times they were reloaded.