Bulging Cases
I pick up a lot of range brass, hence the Range Squirrel moniker. On my last big foraging expedition I picked up a bunch of brass along with aluminum cases, which as I noted in a previous video is not deemed reloadable by the industry. At my own risk I do reload them once, mark and discard after firing.
Labor Day Monday I plan to go my sister’s house to cook a piece of steer and do a bit of shooting in the woods where her husband has his little recreation area. Not planning to forage in the leaves for spent cases, disposable cases were in order. I sat down this morning to put together a few hundred rounds of 9mm aluminum cased ammo.
The bucket of cases from the last harvest had been cleaned, deprimed and crimped primer pockets swaged, but not yet resized. I quickly found that virtually every piece of aluminum was bulged, and when resized extruded off slivers near the case head and were discarded.
Well… I shall size brass then. But soon I found a couple pieces of brass cases that had bulges as well.
Much ink, liquid and virtual, has been spilled lamenting unsupported chambers over the years. I have seen some slight bulges, however these are the worst bulged pick ups that I have come across to date. Anecedotally .40 S&W is the worst offender, though I do not have anything in .40 S&W at this time.
I am aware of Lee’s Bulge Buster (Reloaders Network Amazon Affiliate Link), available in .380, 10mm, .40 S&W, .41 AE, .45 ACP, .45 GAP and .45 Win Mag; but not 9mm as it is tapered. On top of that Lee doesn’t recommend de-bulging cases fired from unsupported chambers, specifically singling out Glock, though a number of other auto pistols have unsupported chambers. Without question I discarded all the aluminum from that batch and brass that extruded up rings of metal or made patterns that looked like incipient head separation.
So… any thoughts or discussion on what is too bulged to be resized or bulge busted?
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I owned a Marlin 60 since 1987, but never really got ‘into’ guns until 2011 when I bought my first 9mm pistol. That was soon followed by a .380 and a 12 guage pump, and I was all in. I had done some 20 guage reloading growing up, and threw myself into 9mm and .223 reloading in 2017, .380 in 2019, 7.62×39 in 2020 and my first revolver in 45 Colt in 2022. It is so satisfying to go to the range and string together ever improving groups with ammo I loaded myself; it doesn’t hurt that I’m a little OCD about technical things, the tangible/visible rewards are really gratifying.
I have a nagging but as yet unattained ‘want’ for a .358 Yeti unloader, it just looks like a really cool caliber. My next learning curve, space permitting, is casting and coating.
