Quote Originally Posted by alamo5000 View Post
Either to neck turn each piece or to buy commercially produced brass. A or B. Dropping every single round every time into a case gauge is possible but it has it's downsides as well.

Neck turning sounds like a lot of work but once I get a couple thousand pieces it will last me for a while. I will have to check on the prices of commercial brass but odds are I will just go that route.

I'm broke but not so broke that I am willing to risk another blow up. I like reloading but I like it for the sake of doing it. Saving money is another thing all together. 300 Blackout is still a very new round to me for the most part and I was operating under my standard safety protocols which have worked good for a long time already. Bad components are a whole other animal though.

People said you can form your own brass, and yes that's true...but I learned the hard way that forming your own brass comes with a big fat asterisk.
I really appreciate that you've shared your experience here so we can all learn from it. I never form my own brass but that's largely because I really don't like the idea of having brass that doesn't match its headstamp. For 300 BLK brass my preferred approach is to shoot factory ammo and save the brass. The S&B loaded ammo can be a pretty good value compared to buying just brass.

For the rounds you already have loaded, should you inspect each round with a case gauge? That should pick up any bulging issues, I would think. I never do that with loaded ammo but in this case it seems like it would tell you if you have any more rounds out of spec.

Also, I wonder if running the formed brass through a Lee Collet neck sizer as one last step would help. If the neck is too thick, I suspect the brass would mushroom and be ruined in the collett die.