been saving my brass for awhile. one day i plan on reloading.

what causes the ding on the side of brass? i suspect its from the slide as they are ejected.  only get them from my ten. from both my stock and 22 pound spring.  Are they still safe to use?

thanks

Are they "dent's" or "scratches"? If they are small half moon shaped dents, AKA smilies, I would only use them for mild loads, they have been compromised and only use them after full length re-sizing. Some extractors score (scratch) brass which looks worse than it is but you have to look at them closely, you don't want to use a "gouged" piece.

I seen the same on from my 10. they look like dings.. not very big...

If these are dings or dents up near the mouth of the casing they should be fine.  If cut or split then those are bad.

"smiles" occur very near the ejection rim area, at the unsupported area above the feed ramp of the barrel and that brass is compromised!  It is a distinct line and the brass has started to shear on the molecular level and can not be ironed out even with "pass-through sizing".

This is a bad smile...

Yup, that's a bad one.

Dings on the upper half of the case can also occur during feeding, if the extractor is tight.

Quote from: Marc on January 24 2014 12:04:04 PM MST
Dings on the upper half of the case can also occur during feeding, if the extractor is tight.

Yes, and if the extractor is very strong you can get some good scratches/small gouges on the side of the brass until it gets broken in. I experienced that with the first couple hundred rounds through the Para LS Hunter. The EGW extractor is very strong and dependable on that gun but it had a rough edge or something. It's no longer scoring the brass now, just the normal wear. I've had no smilies at all with it.

My RIA's would ding the brass with the stock set up. After I changed out the recoil spring, mainspring, and installed Wilson flat bottom firing pin stop the dings disappeared. On my g20 the dings stopped after I upped the recoil spring and put in the Storm Lake barrel. Often the dings are caused by the case hitting the edge of the ejection port. Changing the ejection "pulse" seems to make them disappear; or make them really bad. Glocks seem harder for me to figure out whats causing those dents/dings. To many things going on to make a snap decision on what to fix first.

Yep, the Para has a Storm Lake barrel too. Works great so far.....

they are not smiles just little dings about half way up.

Sounds like my Saiga .223. It was caused by the brass hitting the bolt going forward when the brass was ejecting. I put in a Valmet recoil buffer and it fixed the problem. Maybe you can diddle with the extractor a bit or try a recoil buffer and see if that changes the mechanics a bit. A recoil buffer is really cheap to try. You never mentioned what brand of 1omm pistol you have.

My Late Glock 20 would beat my Brass UP ! ! !
The Delta Gold Cup and the Witness Semi Compact eject clean
The Witness Longslide eject clean, but leave a nice Bulge
Nice trade-off I guess