Good morning,
Backstory....
So a coworker brought in an entire large cat litter bucket of 308 brass (and a 1/4 full bucket of 7.62x54R) yesterday and gave them to me. He is moving to a smaller house and this stuff was his dads before he passed and has no need for it as he only hunts via muzzle loader. So he has no real knowledge of the history, shot count, etc.
The 54R brass had a nice piece of paper stating trimmed, and ready to reload. It also chambers in my Mosin just fine, so no issues with it.
Issues with 308....
The brass is a mix of Lake City 83, 85, 86, & TZ 83.
I've never heard of TZ 83 and after doing some Google searching, everything I've found relates to TZ80 being horrible brass/ammo to begin with.
Original owner had a really cool home made case gauge out of what appears to be some ballistic gel. The kid and I went through the majority of the bucket and they all drop in and hit the 'base' of the gauge just fine, so I believe they are trimmed just fine. And they all have a consistent, good OAL per my reloading manuals.
But as you can see from the pics below, some are straight up missing flash holes. And some of the LC brass has what appears to be an extremely deep firing pin strike where the flash hole should be located at? So I'm not really sure what to make of the flash-less holed brass. Scrap it? Drill a flash hole? Use a universal decapper to make the flash holes?
Any and all assistance, info would be greatly appreciated.
Backstory....
So a coworker brought in an entire large cat litter bucket of 308 brass (and a 1/4 full bucket of 7.62x54R) yesterday and gave them to me. He is moving to a smaller house and this stuff was his dads before he passed and has no need for it as he only hunts via muzzle loader. So he has no real knowledge of the history, shot count, etc.
The 54R brass had a nice piece of paper stating trimmed, and ready to reload. It also chambers in my Mosin just fine, so no issues with it.
Issues with 308....
The brass is a mix of Lake City 83, 85, 86, & TZ 83.
I've never heard of TZ 83 and after doing some Google searching, everything I've found relates to TZ80 being horrible brass/ammo to begin with.
Original owner had a really cool home made case gauge out of what appears to be some ballistic gel. The kid and I went through the majority of the bucket and they all drop in and hit the 'base' of the gauge just fine, so I believe they are trimmed just fine. And they all have a consistent, good OAL per my reloading manuals.
But as you can see from the pics below, some are straight up missing flash holes. And some of the LC brass has what appears to be an extremely deep firing pin strike where the flash hole should be located at? So I'm not really sure what to make of the flash-less holed brass. Scrap it? Drill a flash hole? Use a universal decapper to make the flash holes?
Any and all assistance, info would be greatly appreciated.