Marking Brass for Number of Times Fired

[BenPerfected]

If you thoroughly de grease before you mark them and use a sharpie with permanant ink and dry an hr or so before you tumble, it is pretty hard to get those marks to disappear.

The Sharpie markings will come off easily with Acetone

 

[Old School]

I do the sharpie thing and only shoot 50rd lots anyway.
But I'm surprised you guys tumble your precision brass.
I only clean the inside neck with a dry brush and clean off any carbon with alcohol.

 

[jlow]

It's mostly to do with annealing old school.

 

[Brians356]

D

It's mostly to do with annealing old school.

Does brass need to have been tumbled before annealing?

 

[chkunz]

Except markings in the extractor groove - I color code brass that way.

That just gave me another good idea! I had not thought about using the extractor grove to preserve some identification markings, like a different lot and number if firings on the same brand of brass.

 

[chkunz]

Many of these methods described will work for a bolt action in many uses. However, I sometimes shoot an AR in XTC or mid range matches and the world is now full of 223 brass and it is easy to get mixed up with others on the firing line. Also, occasionally when all my brass has gone thru a firing cycle except part of a 50 round box, I have to shoot a match with brass from two different cycles. When I shoot the M14 it is critical that I know when I have gone thru three reloadings, case head separations start to show up in the fourth or fifth reloading, so I reload three times and throw the brass away.