450Bushmaster.net

Hoot has a great idea for using a spring punch to mark brass for number of reloads at the case web. However when I tried it I found it a bit tricky to keep the brass from spinning when trying to punch it. This really slowed me down on the first batch of cases and resulted in a couple gouges instead of nice pin marks.

My solution to this was to build a jig to hold the case and guide the punch onto the case web. Pretty simple taking a hard block of wood, in this case some scrap popular. Drill a 1/2 inch hole about 3/8 down (to far down and the punch bottoms out before it completes the spring cycle) from top to depth of about 1/2 inch.

Insert a case and mark it where it comes out of the hole. Using this marked case as a guide put a mark on the centerline where the web will line back from the face. Drill the intersecting hole with a drill same diameter as the punch shank. This should give a guide hole that puts the punch point right on the case web. Now I can mark 50 cases in just a couple minutes. For a visual see the attached pictures.

Great idea.

Thanks, this forum has given me so much. Just want to give back and maybe help someone else.

Seedyn wrote:Hoot has a great idea for using a spring punch to mark brass for number of reloads at the case web. However when I tried it I found it a bit tricky to keep the brass from spinning when trying to punch it. This really slowed me down on the first batch of cases and resulted in a couple gouges instead of nice pin marks....snip

Made one tonight. No such thing as an idea that can't be improved upon.

Hoot

Is the small mark on the case web lying outside the block representative of the mark left by the punch?

Jim in Houston wrote:Is the small mark on the case web lying outside the block representative of the mark left by the punch?

Not exactly. They're in the thin flat area down in the bottom of the extraction groove, which is kinda below the web area.

Here's an image from my thread describing the technique in the Hoots Information Depository sub-forum titled Tracking Fired Brass



Those were punched freehand on 5 different range sessions, just pinning them to the shooting table and eyeballing it. The irregular drift of the holes is what Seedyn's guide block corrects.

Hoot,

Thanks for the link to your original article. I'm thinking of buying a punch and making one of the holders for the cases.

Right now I'm just putting the brass back into the box I took it out of, which is marked with the number of times I have reloaded the brass inside. I try to shoot only a single generation of brass in each range session, and when cleaning I either clean one generation at a time or if I'm cleaning two generations, I mark the other generation with some finger nail polish on the primer. It's still visible after cleaning, so that I can sort out the cases, before I decap.