Early on in this thread, some one said that brass becomes brittle with age, and that is why the military doesn't use old ammo. After spending 20 years in Army Ordnance in the ammo field, this is news to me. I never heard of ammunition being suspended from use due to age. Some .30-40 Krag and early .30-06 ammo did develop neck splits after aging, but that was due to improper annealing during manufacture. The problem was discovered and corrected by properly annealing the case necks after the last sizing operation, and I never saw a split neck in military ammunition loaded after WWI. Until the advent of one piece plastic hulls, the military used brass shells for their buckshot loads for guard duty, and I never heard of any problems with those shells until they were used up, and I saw some issued as late as 1969.
Any brass shell that was previously fired with a mercuric primer is subject to embrittlement due to mercury contamination and should not be reloaded.
Last edited by Tom Martin; 02/12/11 12:05 PM.
