New to reloading for a 9mm. I am starting out with good once fired brass. I picked up all of the twice fired and brought it home. Question....if the brass passes all the standard checks for reloading how many times do you think I should reload it? I am not shooting hot loads and the cases fired twice show no difference than once fired. All of them are still away from the maximum over all case lengths.

Reload it until it shows signs of wear, usually mouth splits. No reason they should not be loaded 5-6 times, perhaps a lot more.

Mostly, I lose semi-auto brass well before they fail. I have loaded 9mm brass as many times at a dozen and still no neck splits or primers falling out.

Shoot them until the neck splits or the primer pocket is trashed.

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SWCA #3437

This sums it up for me too. Good luck!

I've reloaded revolver ammunition as many as 35 times. The case mouth gets small splits, from being belled and then crimped. But 9mm doesn't get nearly so much of a crimp, just a taper crimp. No reason you couldn't get 20+ reloads. Odds are, you'll lose the brass, before you wear it out.

I color code the case heads of my 9mm reloads with a permanent marker. One time reloads get colored green, 2 to 5 times gets blue, and when they start getting beat up, I color the case heads black.

At most ranges you can pick up plenty of 9mm brass. As I pick up brass, I sort it into small paper bags by the color of the case head, and 'new' 9mm range brass gets thrown into its own bag. Saves a lot of time later. I use the small paper bags sold for taking lunches to work, to sort the brass into.

Load your 9mm just powerful enough to reliably cycle your pistol(s). It saves wear and tear on your gun(s).

In the mid 1970's, when I started reloading 9mm, I cast my own bullets, and even with the cost of scrap lead, bullet lube, everything, i could reload a box of 50 9mm for almost exactly $1/each. I used to shoot 700 rounds a week. I spent ALL my free time casting bullets, sorting and sizing them, and reloading. I put over 30,000 rounds through a S&W Model 59. In hind sight, I wish I had used a better lube on the slide rails; I just used gun oil. Grease is better for so much shooting, especially for a gun with an aluminum frame. It got fairly worn, but I got more in trade for the Model 59 than I paid for it, when I traded for a 659. Good times.

I love the 9mm round. So many cool firearms chambered for it. It's the cheapest centerfire ammunition to reload, as well.

With normal loading practices (not excessively hot loads or too much flare on the case mouth) chances are you will lose them before they are ready to retire. Here is a case study on how many loads the 9mm will go through before the case is ready for retirement link.

I load around 1200 rounds a week of 9mm, I have a cup by my press that I throw split cases into. In the past year I've accumulated less than 10 cases. I'm sure I lose some cases at the range (I lose all of them at some matches, I don't usually pick up brass there) and gain some new, once fired brass so the stock is ever changing. I've never trimmed a case either. Hope that gives you an idea of how many times a 9mm case can be loaded. I have some friends who shoot 9mm major power factor and they tell me they can load them 2-3 times. I don't shoot major.

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Jepp2 thanks for the link.....a good one. I appreciate the information from you all. Thanks, just the good type of info one can expect from this forum.

In thousands of 9mm reloads I think I have ruined 2 while seating bullets and had 1 mouth split at firing. I still have a few of a batch of brass I bought 25 years ago. Because 9mm brass is plentiful and because autoloaders fling them into the weeds I have had a lot of turnover and don't know that I have ever loaded a single case much over a dozen times but the 9mm case is one of the sturdiest and most durable of all pistol cases.

I reload mine until I lose it or the case splits, and in 9mm I don't have much of that. I'd say as long as the brass passes your inspection, you're good-to-go. Sorry I can't give you a definitive number.

As above and don't worry about case length or trimming. Waste of time.

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USAF, 69-92
Vietnam, 72-73

My experience ...
I've reloaded easily over 100k rounds of 9mm in my life, and I am still using brass I have cycled several dozen times. It's difficult to know exact numbers since I have a box of a of few thousand casings that I continuously pull from, load, shoot, rinse and repeat. These loads are are low to medium charges for range purposes so I never see signs of over pressure on the cases. I might cull 5 or so for mouth splits every time I do a reload session, during which I usually load around 2k rounds. 9mm case life is not infinite and seems to largely depend on load pressures, amount of flaring and crimping, and extractor roughness. I think it is the most durable of the handgun various caliber casings that I have reloaded. Never need to trim and the taper seems to fire form to my pistols very well.

I've been reloading 9mm for longer then I can remember and I rarely have to discard any cases due to splits. I suspect that since I'm usually reloading these to mild target velocity it's one of the reasons for long case life. My re-loads of 125 gr hard cast bullets and 3.8gr of Winchester 231 operate pistols reliably, are accurate
and produce very light recoil.
Jim

I have several hundred that I know have been loaded 40-50x. These have been run through my MAX-11 and UZI smg's. Have just recently started over with a fresh batch of once fired as I purchased a CASE-PRO 100 roll sizer due to the ever increasing size of the bulge at the base of the cases. My guess would be that if you were loading mild pistol loads only,you may never wear them out.

Light loads, they last a long time, shoot them until the brass splits.

I don't know about 9mm, but several years ago one of the shooting magazines(? Guns & Ammo) did an article on how many times you could reload the 38 Special. They started with just a cylinderfull and reloaded several dozen and then just picked out a couple individual cases and reloaded both well over 100 times. The conclusion if I recall correctly was keep reloading it until it fails, then put it in your junk brass bucket to sell the recyclers.

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H Richard
SWCA1967 SWHF244

You can likely reload them more times than you can find them.