Ran the last of my uncleaned 10mm brass through the cleaning process. I sorted and counted it. Total 516 pieces. Seemed like an average size batch, but I never had counted any of the other batches. 11 different head stamps.
Starline - 267
Underwood - 78
FC Auto - 44
Remington Peters (Nickel) - 43
Sig - 41
Top Brass - 22
Winchester - 15
PPU - 3
Norma - 1
Hornady - 1
Midway - 1
Judging the rest of my empty clean brass, I have around 3000 pieces. Not counting loaded ammo.
Inspection is the key when you are reusing any brass for any caliber, cleaning and sorting helps to find stuff not suitable for reuse...another reason I like using the pass-through sizing process. It helps with sorting good from bad.
Thought I'd add this to help out...
Midway - (Midway Arms Inc., Columbia, MO.) became MidwayUSA, used to sell their own brass but I think it was made by StarLine if I recall. It was great brass for reloading.
Norma - (ÅB Norma Projektilfabrik, 670 40 Amotfors, Sweden) was some of the original 10mm Brass commercially. Strong brass and may have a thicker web area which can decrease case capacity or raise pressures with some loads.
Star Line - (1300 WEST HENRY, SEDALIA, MISSOURI) makes brass for many companies, if you wanted they would make it with your name for the right price and size order...
Underwood - contracts with Starline for his own cases = good brass
PPU - (Prvi Partizan, 31000 Titovo, Uzice, Yugoslavia) Questionable quality and usually poor reloading properties.
PPU=Piss Poor Unreliable ???
R-P, REM-UMC (Remington Arms Company, Inc., Bridgeport CT , and later: Lonoke, AR) (also used by CDM of Mexico)
UMC Union Metallic Cartridge Co., Bridgeport, CT part of Remington. Was alway good brass but newer nickel seems to flake off...
PETERS (Peters Cartridge Company, Cincinnati, OH) I think Remington as acquired them.
FC - (Federal Cartridge Corp., Anoka, MN 55303 (also produced in Germany and Austria for Federal) Some have been brittle/stiff and show splits on initial firings. Seen many that were fired in the fluted chambers of the H&K MP-5 10 that were split longways in the initial first firing as loaded for FBI contracts. recently found 30 and only 20 were not split.
Winchester WIN - (Olin Corp., East Alton IL 62024, USA) used to be a great brass and was alloy was stronger as made. But tarnished quickly...
SIG - is newer stuff it might be made by Jagemann (Jagemann Sporting Group,5757 West Custer Street, Manitowoc, WI ? JAG - Jagemann tested great in my reloading test and so did the SIG brass.
Top Brass - 10325 County Road 120, Salida, CO I think the contract out for their new brass and they sell plenty of used brass.
Awesome info! Great tidbits I didn't know.
The FC stuff shows no negative signs. May load up 50 fairly hot.
I tossed any damaged cases. There were very few FUBAR, but I also sort when depriming and let me tell you there were more than a couple that got pretty mashed and torn because they didn't quite get ejected from the AR. I have 2-3 cases slightly bent that I marked, will test to see how they fare in resizing.
I will eventually sort all my other 10mm brass, up until now I was just sorting at reloading time. It slowed down that process too much.
I picked up a couple bags of TMQ (Jagemann) to test, but I pretty much just stick with Starline.