When I first started shooting .44 Magnum in the late sixties I had a lot of 500-pieces of Remington brass. After they were loaded 4-5 times, each time they were reloaded I’d lose 3-4 pieces to small cracks at the case mouth. If the crack was small enough, they could be annealed and trimmed to .44 Special length. I’m still using some of those cases fifty-years later.

At that time I also was shooting .222s and had both Remington and Norma brass in boxes of 20. When one case would crack, I’d anneal them and keep going. I still have some of those. Recently I ran across them, re-annealed and trimmed them, and started loading them again. I had a batch of about 15-18 pieces. After I’d loaded them six times they were still fine and producing the kind of accuracy I expect.

Suffice to say, you can get a lot of use out of good quality cartridge cases if you don’t overwork them and will go to the small trouble of keeping them in good shape.

I had not heard the Harry Pope story. That’s interesting. John Linebaugh once told me he took a random piece of .416 Remington brass and loaded it twenty times before he said good enough and lost interest. Good quality cartridge brass is pretty amazing stuff.