It happened again.

[Ian]

In 20 years of reloading and shooting .45 ACP, I found a second split case tonight. The first one was a few years ago. This one was a Perfecta case I must have picked up during my IDPA stint about 8-10 years ago, and it probably only has made it 20-25 loadings. A little bit of the brass in my regular rotation bucket is old WCC stuff from the 50s and 60s that I was given to start out with when I bought my first 1911 in 1996, for my 21st birthday. I have no idea how many times the contents of that bucket have been loaded, many dozens for sure, and even though the headstamps are mostly obliterated on the oldest ones the only ones I've lost are ones I actually lost save the two split ones. You guys don't suppose I've actually begun to wear this brass out, do you?

Good thing I sorted and saved back about 8-10K cases over the years as I came across known once-fired brass, I might finally need to swap some of it into the rotation.

 

[fiver]

I didn't know perfecta had been out that long.
it is a recent addition to the store shelves around here. [wal-mart]
and it usually looks to be the cheapest price to me.

 

[Ian]

It may not have been, I have about two-three boxes of it mixed in and I'm not certain when I picked it up for sure, I'm a compulsive brass grabber any chance I get, which hasn't been often in the last about 4 years since out local range started re-selling it. All the off-brand and oddball brass left over from sorting the Federal/RemChester/PMC goes in the rotation bucket. A-USA and CCI/Speer goes directly into the trash, and S&B gets it's own bucket that mostly just gets glowered at (HATE the primer pockets).

 

[fiver]

I'm still trying to get used to PPU/NNY and Hornady ,being mainstream brass now.
anything else is well just something else.

 

[Josh]

I load all 45 brass, brand be damned, i guess i am a caveman when it comes to the subtlety of brass brands.

 

[KHornet]

Ian, You are so correct Ian about range brass being scarce the last 4 years.

 

[Lost Dog]

Rumors are taking flight as we speak that Remington and Winchester are no longer selling loading components, starting with brass.

 

[KHornet]

Say it isn't so. I have always favored Remington, because I was to cheap to buy Norma or Laupa.

 

[Lost Dog]

That's the buzz. More than one source now. Do a Google on it. There's a few that are chatting this up. Just saying is all. But it wouldn't surprise me a bit.

 

[RicinYakima]

The economics is that they aren't selling it because they aren't making it. They are buying off-shore brass with their head stamp, so no profit in reselling it.

 

[Ian]

I load all 45 brass, brand be damned, i guess i am a caveman when it comes to the subtlety of brass brands.

Some large differences that DO show up on target or make reloading a pain: Primer pockets. Some, not all IMI and all CCI, Speer, and at least one othe that escapes me have a concave head face and zero chamfer. This makes seating to full depth and getting the primer cup started in a progressive a royal PITA. The SB stuff is really nice brass of good composition and temper, but again those damn primer pockets are unchamfered and very, very TIGHT. Federal for some time now has been using lead-free primers and since then, the flash holes are huge. I have a handful of brass Speer cases that are identical to the Federal in every way, so I throw those in together, but always separate from the other brass because there's a big difference in pressure. Those typically get Federal primers stuck back in them, too. Don't tell Richard Lee I use Federal primers with his progressive presses, or if you do tell him that I'm extremely careful in seating them.

Winchester brass gets sorted and only plays on 'away games' when I likely won't be getting it back. I dislike the stuff because it's thin, has significantly less meat in the head area, and much greater internal volume than other brands. Of all the brass headstamps, Winchester seems to be the easiest to have an 'ahschit' with neck tension that will blow up your pistol.

I recently tried out the small primer brass and wish I'd bought a few thousand back when the haters were practically giving it away.

 

[Josh]

That explains a lot, I have an old M&P 45 service pistol that can't tell the difference. It seems a lot of the issue comes from progressive press priming and honestly I have not loaded much on any progressive machine as I can still keep up with my ammo supply with a lee 4 hole turret press.

Thanks for the explanation, I may not be a caveman after all, I just haven't stepped up to the big league of progressive presses

 

[Pistolero]

Perfecta?? Wow, never ran into one of those, or heard of the ammo.

As to SB, yes, PITA brass - pockets are too shallow in my experience. As to Remington stopping selling components,
hope not, I did just get 300 Rem cases for .45 ACP for match ammo. Repeated testing has shown that loads in
Rem brass have outperformed all other brands that I tested (Starline, WW, Fed) with 200 SWC target loads, about
3.8-4.0 TG. I had been using mixed years Rem, just sorting through my stash, finally decided to actually buy some
Rem .45 ACP brass and dedicate it to match loads. First time in a decade when I bought some Starline regular and Starline
AutoRim brass. Prior to that, it was probably 25 years since I bought any .45 ACP brass.

And, yes, much of my old WCC brass either has no headstamp left or just the barest traces. I have cracked a few, too, although
not recently.

21 YO in 1996...... you were born the year I graduated with my Master's, you young whippersnapper, you.

Bill

 

[Ian]

41 ain't that bad but has given me plenty of previews of things to come. My eyes have crossed the 70YO mark, the vitreous detached in my dominant eye a couple of weeks ago so now I have a matched set of eyes again (other one let go last fall), like someone threw a wad of dryer lint and spider webs in each eye. It's really hard to read road signs or strings of numbers due to the distracting fuzzy lines swimming all through my vision. I can still see rifle sights, mostly, if the rear sight is at least 8" in front of my eye, so not all is lost.

 

[Pistolero]

Not exactly sure what you are talking about, other than it sounds like it sucks. I got glasses
for nearsightedness at 13, but my corrected vision was outstanding until I was about 63 when
I noticed a bit of glare on bright days. Fortunately, I was going to a really overachiever of
an optometrist, about half way to a real eye doc, and she had been doing careful baseline checks
for several years. She picked up the field of vision loss because she was testing me regularly, so even
though glaucoma pressure was within normal limits, it was clear that I was losing sight.....and
the lenses were starting to cloud up, beginnings of cataracts, which is what was causing the glare.

She referred me to an eye surgeon and things seem fairly stabilized now, I hope, another visual
field test next week. Cataract surgery is no sweat, I wish I hadn't put it off for a miserable year.
Can see pistol sights on a bright sunny day, but middle sights on rifles are pretty fuzzy. Been
switching some rifles to peep rears, making smaller inserts helps (pinhole camera effect is a
wonderful thing).

Hope your eyes hold up. Is there any treatment for your issues? Is this something that is
expected to stay the way it is now, or progress?
Good luck.

Bill

 

[Ian]

I have pars planitis in both eyes. Worse in my dominant. https://rarediseases.info.nih.gov/gard/7339/pars-planitis/resources/1 In my case it is idiopathic. Much to my great delight it pretty much died out on its own about three years ago after a ten year stint of routine ups and downs which have left me with a layer of permanent scar tissue on my dominant-eye retina and a variety of retinal tears which had to be lasered up. The frequent steroid injections and the glaucoma they induced further added to scarring and a little bit of optic nerve degeneration, but not a terrible amount. Overall the disease and the treatment aged my eyes half a lifetime in just a few years, but it's over for now at least and other than the aftermath my eyes are stable and pressures are normal (high single digits). I am expecting to have cataract surgery before I'm 50, maybe 45, as a result of the treatments. I have a better time line for that now that posterior vitreous detachment has occurred in both eyes, cataracts are soon to follow. PVD is part of normal aging because the vitreous gel shrinks over time and pulls away from our retinas, causing the appearance of light flashes and sparks at night and a good dose of pesky floaters. Usually that happens around the 65-70 year mark, but I'm having all of that going on now (in addition to the floaters I already had from all the inflammation and retinal tears), so by the time I'm 70 my eyes will be REALLY good and worn out. I really can't complain too much, though, because 30 years ago people with pars planitis just went blind because there wasn't really any effective treatment for it. Due to my high risk of retinal detachment I avoid hard-kicking rifles and am extra-careful about getting knocked in the head, reasons why I'm slowing down on the high-velocity cast bullet shooting, staying away from my elephant guns, and had to give up the hard-core martial arts training.

 

[Pistolero]

You said something that I have recognize myself - when I look at some medical issues that I have had,
yet there has been good, effecitive treatments available - when a few decades back things would have been
pretty grim, really.

Best wishes, sir. Hope you can continue to enjoy visual-based games that we play.

My cataracts came with very rapid increasing nearsightedness, which was a really big problem. A
new prescription was pretty poor in 6 weeks! I was fearful of the surgery, and put it off for a year.
That was about the dumbest choice I have ever made. I had miserable, deteriorating vision for
over a year, and in the end, once they did one eye, I couldn't get the second one done soon
enough.

Bill

 

[KHornet]

We are all today very lucky with modern medicine and the advances in same. Catarac surg in both eyes, ruptured appendix, gall bladder surg, kidney stones surg, not to mention the fact that the wife and I being in remission from cancer. Without the advances in medicine and continuing research, the wife and I would both be dead right now. We are a truly blessed generation. It is hard to imagine what developments will produce in the next few years.
Paul

 

[fiver]

if they are allowed to make those progresses.
I have seen some amazing stuff done in research then hear nothing further about what happens to things after I see them.

 

[Rick]

Very true. I have been hearing for at least 30 years that a cure for diabetes was within 5 years. Still hearing the same thing.