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bigedp51 wrote:
If you do not know what the case diameter was before it was fired what you are doing could be over kill.
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I acknowledge that I'm erring on the side of caution.
It is not necessary for me to know the "before" diameter of the case. If the brass is larger than SAAMI maximum for the case diameter at the head, it has stretched beyond its elastic limit. And that means it has stretched by a greater amount than I care to deal with.
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At the Brian Enos's Forums many of the competitive shooters use range pickup brass. They load these cases until they split or have over sized primer pockets.
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So?
Pistol cases that aren't oversize at the head enter my reloading stream and are reloaded and shot until they split or are lost in the weeds.
Apart from saying that some anonymous shooters on another forum apparently don't measure their cases before putting them into their reloading streams and then do exactly the same thing that I do, I fail to see your point.
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And most reloaders use their rifle brass until they have over sized primer pockets or a cracked neck.
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Again, whether someone uses a case until the neck cracks has nothing to do with whether the case is expanded at the case head.
Rifle cases that aren't oversize at the head enter my reloading stream and are reloaded and shot until they split at the neck, have loose primer pockets or are lost in the weeds. Most are lost in the weeds before their fifth firing so I rarely encounter any neck splits with rifle cartridges.
But, I think you miss the point of the process. It has nothing to do with how long brass is reloaded, it has to do with the dimensions it has when I first receive it.
As indicated in the post you take issue with, I am familiar with the Lee Bulge Buster die and the concept of its operation. Because of the thinning of the case wall that occurs when brass is stretched more than it should, I do not believe that conventional resizing or the Bulge Buster is a reliable, safe approach to dealing with oversize cases. I measure them using SAAMI maximum as the maximum amount of deformation acceptable to me. Any brass fired in an unsupported chamber (i.e. Glocked brass) will not pass this test. Brass fired from an open bolt will likely not pass the test. Other cases fired in abnormally loose chambers likewise will not pass the test.
I've been reloading for 38+ years and have never had a case-related failure, so if proceeding out of an abundance of caution keeps me and my guns safe and intact, it seems a small price to pay.