Freakin .380 brass in my 9mm pile

[ben b.]

Stupid .380 brass, occasionally I'll get some in my work load. I almost never catch it unil it has been resized and maybe primed. Usually it won't activate the powder drop but yesterday I found I'd shot one that I'd loaded, has happened one other time.

9mm Kurz? It's pronounced 9mm Curse.

Kurz you .380 brass!

[jhgtyre]

I too hate the .380 brass, the cartridge and even some people named Kurt bug me just because of the similarity in names. I've made a few ".380 longs" before but have always managed to chuck them before they made it into the gun.

-ld

[B.J. Norris]

1000

[ChuckS]

I would like to add a couple to this rant:

.45 GAP. But what is worse is that WIN .45 NT. Small pistol primer????? That was brilliant!

[BayouSlide]

Agreed. I'ved been even more careful with brass pickups at the local sheriff's range where I shoot after I shot one .380 case while practicing one day. For the record, a Glock 34 will apparently fire a .380 case reloaded with a 147 gr Zero and 3.3 grains of Titegroup...now I know what a real flattened primer looks like

I've loaded some in the past that slipped into my 550 run, but that was the only one that made it through the case gauge...must have been asleep at the wheel that day.

Curtis

[ChrisStock]

Oh yeah... it happens. I have escaped this over the last 10K or so of 9MM I have loaded, but in the beginning, it was hell. Yes, .380 will chamber and fire, but the giveaway for me was FTE problems. I dumped all of my 9MM brass on the garage floor and sorted it again, haven't had an issue since.

And yes, small primer brass in .45causes small blue clouds to float around the property after every work stoppage. PITA.

[Anubis]

Sounds just like 38 super auto getting mixed in with our super comp brass

[Micah]

+1 It is a productivity killer in my case feeder.

[WillM]

I had over 20 in a batch of 1000 9mm cases I bought from a dealer here on the forum. Most of them stopped my 1050 dead, but a few made it past the powder drop where I caught them. I exchanged emails with him about the issue but he basically just shrugged me off and dismissed my concerns. Needless to say I'll never do business with him again. I'd be glad to tell you who by PM. Glad I started with only 1000 just to try him out.

[al503]

When I'm loading up a new batch of once-fired brass, I dump a few handfuls into a large ziplock bag and basically flatten all of the brass onto their sides. You can then look at them very closely before lubing and dumping them into the hopper.

It's the fastest and easiest way for me to take out anything that doesn't belong (besides the occasional .22 case).

[Miranda]

Its a bitch ain't it.

[Albert]

At an IDPA match I attended earlier this year where BUGs were allowed and encouraged, one of the shooters decided to make his own .380 casings out of 9mm cases. He did warn us of this and most of it got separated, but of course a few of them got by and the only way you would be able to tell was that they were a little shorter (he actually trimmed the cases down) than a 9mm case.

[inkedshooter]

Ha Ha!!!! Glad I'm not the only one that runs into this!!

[lugnut]

Not as bad at the Berdan brass with 2 flash holes!!! That REALLY SUCKS.

[Cat355]

Occasionally, I've encountered this annoying problem... Too bad cases can't be color coded... Hmmm, or can they be?

[shred]

.. The sucky ones are the ones labelled 9mmB or 9mmK or whatever on them..

[Johann the Horrible]

Over here all the police and military brass are Berdan primed. I just gave up trying to catch them all and got myself a Lee die. At least the in the Lee de-priming die the de-priming pin can survive an encounter with a Berdan case. It does however slow down the re-loading process considerably.

Oh ya, .380ACP brass is as common as Rocking Horse... lets just say very scarce over here so I never had your problem.