There are a ton of questions in there, so let me pick through this and answer them in order to the best of my ability. I have a full 5-gallon bucket full of range pickup from my buddy who was the range master at a police range locally for years and years. Anyway, point is, it's police issue (most likely single fire). I have about half the bucket in various stages of clean. I begin with my SS media separator where I tumble the crap out of the dirty stuff to knock out dirt/grime/rocks/grass/etc. I then give it a second rinse and sort it into caliber by hand. Once sorted and I have a full 6qt tub, I set that aside and begin tumbling ... at this point, I haven't done any QC. Now, after tumbling, I load all the rounds neck up in 50 count Federal Champion Wall-Mart special trays (I bought 1,000 rounds from Cheaper Than Dirt about 3 months ago). These trays are great for orienting the shells for inspection. I then give them a good once over mouth up looking for any dings or nick on the case mouth and any creases on overly squared mouths. Once I toss those in the recycle bin, I flip them all head up on a paper towel lined cookie sheet. At this point, I can discern head stamping and overall head condition. Based on this procedure, I'd care to say I have about 90+% federal brass with the remaining being Winchester or PMC ... every now and then the odd duckling shows up. At this point, I knock them all down and roll them around to check the case body for any dings or gouges that look suspect and weed them out into the recycle bin. Finally, I lube it all and place it in a bin marked "ready to de-bulge". That is then de-bulged one by one so I get a 2nd set of eyes on the brass ... anything that's super hard to pass is thoroughly inspected and tossed if it looks suspect. Once that's done, it goes in a bin marked "ready to load" and sits next to the reloader. I then pick them out one by one and feed the cases into the AP, making this the 3rd time I've see it ... at this point, I feel pretty damn confident that nothing suspect has gotten through the inspection process.
Now, that being said ... I have modified this process as I have been reloading and I didn't always de-bulge and in fact, loaded a few rounds that I later pulled apart since the resizing exhibited signs of the "folding over" of the bulge being pressed. I loaded up 100-150 rounds this way prior to adding the de-bulge process into the mix. I have yet to see a single case with a crease since and anything I saw before was removed.
As for how many rounds have I shot reloaded? I can tell you exactly ... I reloaded 550 rounds ... this was the very last box (on the bottom of the stack, making some of my first loads I think), I had one box of spent rounds with 3 rounds in it as well as this full box of 50 left. So I have approximately 500 rounds fired since I began reloading about a month ago.
All 50 of these rounds had Federal head stamps. Like I have said in a prior post, I have adjusted the die once since and everything I have produced lately (dummy round today for example) passed the push in test. I got around to testing the pressure required and while not exactly scientific, I was able to test the pressure required to setback the bullet of the remaining 35 that were not fired or in the mag that exploded. The bullet starts to slip between 35-50lbs. of pressure applied on a bathroom scale that is accurate to .1 lbs.
This is all I have been thinking about all day and the more and more I mull it over, the more I keep coming back to the crimp, setback and charge. I remember just how finicky the scale was measuring and getting TiteGroup to meter consistently ... leading me to believe that my 4.8-4.9 charges could have easily been overcharged to 5.0-5.2 range with the cop die showing much signs. I'll do some more measuring test and get video/pictures of my findings. BTW, my dummy round I was pressing on so long and heavily that the scale turned itself off after ramping past 75lbs. and no give in the bullet. I'm going to test on a 165gr personal defense round to compare, but I think my current setup is golden and these rounds were from an early run and possibly could have been one with a creased bulge on resizing.
One thing is for certain ... It has taught me a new found respect for just how "on the line" these things can be and it's a dangerous game to play if you do so lackadaisically. I had no idea Tite Group was such a hot powder as I went to a shop and asked for the shop reloader's recommendation. He knew I was new and I took his suggestion without prior research ... that WILL NEVER happen again. My lack of knowledge on the subject of this powder's characteristics nearly cost me my hands ... considering I'm a programmer by trade, that would make things even worse!!!
