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So Simon the recommendation for long brass life is "treat it like sh!te"?

thank you for your replies

dromia wrote:So Simon the recommendation for long brass life is "treat it like sh!te"?

No, not in such a nut shell. But, my recommendation would be, don’t get het up on case life. Cases are consumable. Yes, now expensive, but still consumable. I was taught by some very practical riflemen who if they could see it, could hit hit. When it came to brass there were only three cardinal rules. Stay away from military brass, because it breaks de-capping pins and internally they’re more limited. (Not such a concern now as not as much milsurp about) Always clean your brass before resizing. A dirty case can wreck a good die and you can’t see damage so easily on a dirty case. And finally, if it’s damaged, bin it.

See far too many people with neither the skill set, nor the rifle to really warrant the level of attention given each case. Batched by internal volume of H2O, primer pocket uniforming externally, deburring internally, neck turning, batching by number of firings, et al. Now if it’s your thing and you want to do that because of “why not?”, then fill your boots if that’s part and parcel for you. But for the overwhelming vast majority, it’s deminishing returns. Like I said, my Grandpa’s “rules” have served me well. I’ve added to that to stay away from maximum loads as there are rarely the most accurate anyway and do hit your brass. This and a multitude of other reasons had me ditch .22-250 as a target cartridge.

Why would maximum loads make you ditch the 22-250?
I've found it shoots well with pretty much all of the load spectrum, from minimum all the way to 4,000fps stuff.

Had a Ruger #1 Varmint in stainless in .22-250. The prettiest rifle I’ve owned, possibly. Shooting it, was just no fun. It would preform right at the top end only and wouldn’t shoot anything heavier than 55gn. The muzzle blast was thoroughly unpleasant. In the context of this thread, I had some Federal and Remington brass which didn’t last very long at all.

Went to a friend of a friend who uses it on foxes and long range crow. Only uses factory ammo and reckons it’s like a laser. I doubt I’ll ever have another rifle chambered in .22-250 based on my experience with it.

My Winchester 223 brass batch is on its 13th reload/14th firing and I am just starting to notice a few split necks, still less than 1% so it'll get another firing out of the remainder yet. I full length size each time as it needs to work in many different rifles.

It still shoots better than me in my rifles and is more than capable of scoring enough to win competitions (it's the old fart on the trigger that lets it down).