re: " usable ugly"
therein describes a not uncommon finding with a small percentage of my own brass.

Being motivated both by genuine interest in understanding the difference between 'cosmetically challenged' and 'fatally flawed' as well as simple economic advantage, in my ongoing brass reuse/reload/recovery project, I have come to an operational decision that works well for my purposes.

1) any obvious structural flaws in my brass-prep inspection process, is deposited in my 'junk brass' container headed to the metal recycling facility;

2) most 'cosmetic flaws' are just that, and far more typically are well defined as "usable ugly";

3) Virtually ALL (say 90%+) of actual stress cracks in (handgun) brass develop either in the resizing/bullet seating phase, with the rest (10% maybe) during actual firing in the gun.

Whatever initiates the actual physical crack is not readily observable in
my inspection process. Given 2 otherwise identical cases, one suddenly demonstrates a linear crack while the other 999 in the batch don't. Those cases stepped on while on the ground are by experience, doomed sooner than later so they go in the junk brass can anyway.

Once I quit over flaring the case mouth, by far the most cracks seem to originate mid-body.

I estimate my brass loss to such as *cracks* at less than 1% per week over the last several decades.

I've had a few brass corroded enough I didn't process them.
Nickle brass seems considerably more prone to cracks than brass brass.

My handgun brass is far more often subjected to the lower half of the reload recipe than the upper half.

Hope this interests other reloaders.

Cheers for the New Year.

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Dum vivimus Vivamas