I was sorting some brass yesterday and came across one with a *USA* headstamp. The case appeared to be brass, but it made me think of Winchester's "USA Forged" line of steel-cased ammo, and I know that brass-plated steel *is* a thing, though I thought it to be obscure.

So I grabbed a little flashlight that I have that has a magnet on the end, and I tested the case. It did not stick, all was good. But then, somehow, a DIFFERENT case popped out of the pile and stuck to the magnet:



The pho? I've loaded S&B for years . . . how can this be?! I did some more dabbing around with the magnet, and found a few more, all S&B.

Holy shit. At that point I decided to step up my game, and I went to find my Mojo Pick Stick that I use for Greenwater cleanups.

I ran it through my bucket of cleaned, ready-to-load 9mm brass:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSjN25JdbHI

I found a total of ten in that bucket of brass:



See that one with the bluish streaking? That's an FM headstamp, one of those mfers with the stepped insides. The rest were S&B. Some of the S&B cases had similar but smaller bluish spots, perhaps the start of rust from wet tumbling . . . ? I'm just guessing.

Well crap. Next up . . .


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4Co1iUisMo

Well, fuck me sideways. I thought this stuff was pretty rare, but apparently not. Other than the one FM, all of those that I saw had S&B headstamps with either 08 or 09 on them. This tells me that I've been reloading these for ten years now, and I've never had an issue that I related to the cases, so maybe the reality is that they're not that big of a deal. However, doesn't matter, from now on I'm going to run that Pick Stick through all of my brass, and make sure I pull out anything that has steel in it. If nothing else, it'll be an easy way to find the stepped FM cases, and make sure I get them out of there.

I'm not going to worry about the thousands of rounds that I have loaded. I'm sure they'll shoot just fine.

Didn't know the stepped ones had steel in them.

Soft bimetal alloy is close to brass.
Russians reload them without any issues, even non-plated ones (Tula, Wolf...).
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qLNQPhZo9kw

You need to work on your sales pitch.

It's a thing Steve. Freedom munitions has been selling their "American Steel" brass plated ones for a long time.
Heck, I was shooting that stuff with you in the action bays a year or so ago, and I laughed about it and warned you when you were picking up brass.
Damn, and I think MY memory is going?
Prevogen Steve, make sure you pickup a bottle for me, too.
Wait...what were we talking about?
https://www.freedommunitions.com/ammuni ... l-new.html

Yeah, I remembered that you had some but I didn't know that it was Freedom Munitions . . . and I sure as hell didn't know about S&B!

i dare you to stick the magnet in your other pistol caliber ammo boxes...

I’ve picked up a lot of 9mm and I always check for .380’s that like to sneak their way into the mix and remember seeing that headstamp. I’ve also sold 10’s of thousands of em and no one has complained... Yet.