Gary Reeder
I mainly pick up our fired brass here in the shop
Tuesday, March 24, 2020, 13:12

we shoot a lot of ammo every week and on minor repair jobs we have the customer furnish a box of ammo with his gun and from time to time the ammo people bring in for the work on their guns is the Federal small primer 45. Every Wednesday and Saturday or Sunday when I do the bluing I tumble all the brass to weed out any junk brass like the aluminum cases and military brass with the Berdan primer, plus if I run across a case that has a defect I can junk that one.
When I am loading 45 on one of my Dillons as I pick up a piece of 45 brass to put it in the press to size, I glance at the base of the case and the small primer cases are easy to spot as are the military brass with the crimped in primers. When I get one of these I pitch them in small boxes to get them out of the way. it only takes an extra second or two to spot the small primer brass or the military brass. Here a while back I bought 70,000 rounds of once fired 45 ACP brass from a police range dealer. They were in a military 20mm ammo case that was full. All were once fired by police qualifying so those I know are OK.

We don't have a range here in Flagstaff so any brass I pick up is from ammo I shot. If I am testing some new loads on the weekend I drive out to the boonies with my truck, lay a tarp down and do my shooting. Most of the brass lands on the tarp so no problem gathering it up.

I can understand John's reluctance to use picked up brass. i won't pick up brass that is lying around the cinder pits where i shoot and there are thousands of rounds of mostly 9mm and 40 S&W brass lying everywhere, plus a lot of 12 gauge shotgun hulls. If a person wanted to spend an hour picking up spend brass he could get easily a thousand rounds of 9 and 40 brass.

Now WB would be in heaven if he saw some of the cinder pits here and the brass lying everywhere. He would be thinking "I will save 1¢ if I pick up that 40 S&W brass, even if it is old and turned brown with age and the weather. So I will leave the brass where it lies in case he wants to take a trip to Flag one day.