Do most of you clean your brass when reloading? How necessary is this step or is it just cosmetic?
Die life and case inspection.
Plus it just isn't in me to load good components with my time and effort into a crap looking case.
The same reason you don't put on dirty underwear after to take a shower.
You don't want carbon, dirt and grit in your dies.
I currently use a wet tumbler and next to good case lube, cleaning brass helps with running it through the dies way easier. Especially with pistol cases which do not need lube when using carbide dies.
Pistol dies are meant to be used without case lube, so cleaning them lets you size them smoothly.
So far I've just reloaded my own brass so it's not that dirty. Just some residue from being fired. I've been wiping them down one at a time with a rag that has some case lube on it before I put it in the single stage press for removing the primer. This gives me a good look at the case to check for flaws but it is very time consuming. The manuals I've read don't seem to include the cleaning step as a prerequisite for reloading.