Use it or lose it? Dent in case mouth...

[boisepaw]

30-06 case having been shot out of a Garand...notorious for bending case mouths. After putting it through the re-sizing die twice, it still has this deformity at the mouth. Do I load it anyway or toss this case?

 

[Squaregrouper]

I would toss it because it will likely have seating issues.

 

[trickg]

I'd toss it. It sucks to lose a piece of brass like 30-06 that isn't easily replaced with other range pickup like 223 or 308, but if it was mine, I'd stop messing with that one and just toss it.

 

[4g64loser]

Toss it.

 

[platekiller]

It’s not too bad but always a good idea to be safe. Just a thought, what’s the length of the brass, if it needs to be trimmed might just be able to save it.

 

[SKIP]

I use a Phillips screwdriver to remove dents.
No dings using this process.

 

[Blacksmith101]

Link to slow motion videos of a Garand in action which shows why the brass gets dinged so much:



The fifth video shows one hitting the sight bridge.
In the seventh video you can see one hitting the op rod.

 

[lazarus]

Try to seat it and see what happens. In my experience, with a Lee FCD, it'll iron out that wrinkle in a little over half of cases. What I do is seat a bullet, crimp it and see what it looks like, it is look acceptable, I pull the bullet, check to make sure the case OAL isn't messed up, possibly debur the case mouth, and load it up.

If it still appears very messed up, I chuck it. If I was loading something precision, nope, gone it would be. If it is just range food, so long as it didn't appear to create an unsafe condition, good to go.

Oh, only do this with a bullet with a crimp groove. If it does not have a crimp groove, my experience is unless the crimp is incredibly light, which won't iron that out, and it also dents the bullet enough I wouldn't want to try to reuse the bullet after pulling. No sense in damaging/chucking a 20-40 cent bullet, just to save a 30 cent case.

 

[Rockzilla]

Would of tried a tapered punch, or a center finder tapered punch, to see
what I could to make it work, all prior to sizing of any kind, then mny be
see if it needs trimmed. That's nothing compared to what a HK91 or 93 does
to brass....

-Rock

 

[Uncle Duke]

I use a Phillips screwdriver to remove dents.
No dings using this process.

Yep! Then a light chamfer and deburr if needed. Looks salvagable.

 

[Bountied]

When in doubt throw it out.

 

[trickg]

When in doubt throw it out.

There are things I'll let slide when reloading - minor cracks at the edge of the case mouth are something I might overlook, particularly with revolver rounds - roll-crimping can cause that after a number of reloads, but otherwise the brass is still safe.

With something that will be fired semi-auto, I'm a bit pickier. Anything that might potentially cause an issue with a round going into battery or with extraction gets tossed.

 

[wpage]

Looks reuseable. smooth it over.