Wilson reloading

[tdoug]

I am the proud owner of an arbor press and neck sizing, bushings, and seating dies for 3 calibers I frequently shoot.

The question is, does anything change if you're using virgin brass, as opposed to once fired?

[necchi]

Depends on how your sizing your once fired brass. Some take advantage of the "fire formed" aspect of brass fired in their gun, others will full size each time.
The advatage of using new brass is you will be able to keep a count of how many times it's been fired vrs un-known counts of range pick up or brass purchased from un-known sources.
Hope that helps,,keep the questions comming 

[stimpylu32]

I catch some flack for it , but I ALWAYS full leingth size NEW brass , and then if I want to , neck size after that has been fired in my gun .

The reason for the first FL sizing is to true up all the case's , mouth , neck , shoulder , ect , I then trim all to the same OL so when I start to load , everything that I have control over is the same .

Some say new brass is fine as it comes and all you have to do is load , I've seen to many peices of brass that look like they have been kicked around a room first to do it that way . your mileage may very . 

stimpy

[nodlenor]

+1, What Stimpy said.

[saddlebum]

+2 on stimpy

[Dill45]

New brass can have some defects in it.  Such as uncut primer pockets, uncut flash holes, crap in the case, burs, or in my case, I had 50 S&W 500 shells that weren't cut square from the factory so I had to trim them all pretty low to get them squared up.

In general, I'd say FL size them, trim them all to the same size, check for burs and defects, then load them up.  Others will go through a much more demanding process, but they are also probably doing a lot more than I am.  I usually just punch paper at 100 yards max.  But it all depends on what you're doing, going on a big game hunt, or shooting at 1500 yards, you're going to want to make sure every aspect of every piece of brass is the same, but for me, I'm doing neither of those so my process is less demanding.

After you fire them once you can just neck size to help improve the life of the brass.

[calvon]

I have a new custom 35 Whelen made up on a M98 military action, Pac-Nor stainless barrel, composite stock, and Leupold glass. I bought a set of Lee dies and used the FL sizer to "true up" two hundred rounds of new unfired Remington brass. After loading a hundred of them I began getting fail-to-fires. Those that did fire showed primer protrusion, indicating headspace. I took it back to the gunsmith who installed the stock. He checked the headspace and found that a go gauge would go and a no-go gauge wouldn't go. It wasn't the rifle, it was the Lee FL die that set the shoulder too far back.