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Posted: Yesterday 8:00:40 PM EST
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So a couple weekends ago, I was shooting one of my AR's with one of my friends. I was letting him try out my forced reset trigger (his first time). He was shooting it and had a jam. I thought it was a little odd, as this rifle almost never has issues. I look at it and there is a round halfway in/out of the chamber and it will not move. I had to mortar the rifle to clear it. Once it ejected, I picked it up and found it was a live round and the front half of a fired case was on the front of it. I looked on the ground and found the bottom half of the case, it had split about mid way. I thought it was just a random case failure, ya know, shit happens. This rifle has a couple thousand rounds of trouble free use. I just chalked it up to a random case failure. So fast forward to this past saturday and I was firing some rounds testing some loads in my bolt action 223. I notice on the ejected rounds, there was a ring around them about mid way. I have had bolt action rifles leave rings on brass before from rough chambers, but I did not remember this rifle ever doing it. It is a Savage rifle I built using a new precision heavy barrel, so I know the chamber in it is perfect. But it been almost a year since I had shot it. Still, for some reason I did not think too much of it. I tumbled the cases and when I pulled them out of the tumbler, the rings were still there. About 75% of them had it. I look at them with a powerful magnifying glass and it looks like cracks! I take one and place the base in a vice and give the case a whack with the palm of my hand and it snaps right off at the ring. Sure enough, it is separation. Now I am really like WTF? The bolt action rifle, I installed the barrel myself and set it up to where I felt drag/resistance on the go gauge, so I know the headspace on it is nice and tight. The AR, passes the go and no go test as well. The brass I was shooting in the AR is some federal. It is the brass with the dots on the head, I think from American eagle branded stuff. The ones I was using in the bolt action was lake city. So two different brands of brass, both with the same issue. The brass is all once fired, either by me, or purchased. I had a couple thousand rounds, maybe 3 and I ended up finding a member here to process it all for me for a reasonable price, and even kept the LC and FC brass separate for me. He cleaned, swaged, sized and trimmed. I have probably 1000-1500 of it loaded, and probably have fired about 500 of them. So far this is the first time I have had this issue. Now I am trying to figure out what is going on. Is it possible he washed it in something that made the brass brittle? With no headspace issues going on in either rifle, and the brass is once fired, what could be the cause of this? I have had case head separation on other rounds (30-06 and 7.62x54) in the past, but never this far up the case body. I am hoping I do not have a few thousand pieces of compromised brass.  
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Are you sure it's once fired ?? This kind of thing happens when the brass is fired several times or when the brass has been compressed more than required and it's shot in a generous chamber like a NATO chamber. Just a suggestion, get a Hornady Comparator and a set of electronic calipers. Buy some factory ammo and measure with the .223 comparator. If you resize the brass, try to avoid squeezing the brass down any smaller than the factory brass. I don't use a small base die after thousands of .223/5.56 reloads in several different chambers. I have found that Federal brass is the first to crack. I do try to avoid over stressing the brass by not over squeezing it during resizing. Using the comparator gives me some guidance on just how to set up my resizing die to avoid this. I would rather use range brass I picked up and resize it myself than have someone else do it for me. You don't know what you are getting after you get it back. kwg |
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Case head separations are due to too much head clearance. Either excessive headspace or dies pushing the shoulder back too far or a combination of both. SAAMI spec allows up to 0.013” head clearance for many cartridges. In .223 if you have that much and reload the cases, you will get 2-3 firings before separation from my experience. Use a comparator to measure your resized brass compared to fired brass, that will tell you how much head clearance you are running. Compare the fired brass to a go gauge and you can calculate the actual headspace of your rifles. I target 0.000”-0.002” of head clearance in my 223 rifles. All my 223 rifles have chambers with nearly the same headspace. I am not so lucky in 308. I have about 0.010” difference in head spacing between rifles. I have to deal with significantly shorter 308 brass life or size brass different between rifles. |
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Originally Posted By pepe-lepew: Case head separations are due to too much head clearance. Either excessive headspace or dies pushing the shoulder back too far or a combination of both. SAAMI spec allows up to 0.013" head clearance for many cartridges. In .223 if you have that much and reload the cases, you will get 2-3 firings before separation from my experience. Use a comparator to measure your resized brass compared to fired brass, that will tell you how much head clearance you are running. Compare the fired brass to a go gauge and you can calculate the actual headspace of your rifles. I target 0.000"-0.002" of head clearance in my 223 rifles. All my 223 rifles have chambers with nearly the same headspace. I am not so lucky in 308. I have about 0.010" difference in head spacing between rifles. I have to deal with significantly shorter 308 brass life or size brass different between rifles. That brass was oversized. |
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Shooting and Reloading, one hobby feeds the other.
Shooting and Reloading, one hobby feeds the other.
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I have seen some Federal (and Speer, same company) with pretty short casing lengths when new (usually LE loadings). Couple that with the possibility for purchased brass to have been fired in large MG chambers, that is a potential for a lot of growth and case wall thinning. ( LC used to be Federal as well, though Winchester now has the contract.) I would also ask what brand Headspace gages you are using. Those aren’t always the same. And have you checked headspace after the rifle has been used a bit and had a chance to wear in a bit? I always set really tight, knowing it will open up after shooting it a bit. Another thing would be how hot were the previous firings? All factory loadings for sure, 1X for sure? Or were you using new brass and loading it at the top end pressure wise? 1X should be easy to discern, how high the pressure was- not so much…. At this point I would say pull it all down, deprime, and recycle the brass. Not worth screwing around with if 75% is showing the ring…. Just asking for trouble. BTDT in pulling down 4k of loaded .223 (I didn’t load it). It sucked, but how much do you want to hazard 50,000 PSI or more pressure going off in a casing that you know is junk? It is one thing for a casing to separate when you hit it with 50,000+ PSI inside it. Quite another when it separates from practically no force at all being applied to it. Don’t torch your chamber or your face and hands…. |
a loaded gun won’t set you free, so you say…
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Yes the bras was once fired, unless someone found a way to reload it and crimp the primers back in. As mentioned, a lot of it was personally fired by me, the rest that was either purchased or range pickup, all still had the crimps on the primers. I do not have a brass comparator, only a bullet comparator. I do have a wilson case gauge. I will find it tonight when I get home from work and compare some of the cases. |
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Originally Posted By tac556: I have seen some Federal (and Speer, same company) with pretty short casing lengths when new (usually LE loadings). Couple that with the possibility for purchased brass to have been fired in large MG chambers, that is a potential for a lot of growth and case wall thinning. ( LC used to be Federal as well, though Winchester now has the contract.) I would also ask what brand Headspace gages you are using. Those aren’t always the same. And have you checked headspace after the rifle has been used a bit and had a chance to wear in a bit? I always set really tight, knowing it will open up after shooting it a bit. Another thing would be how hot were the previous firings? All factory loadings for sure, 1X for sure? Or were you using new brass and loading it at the top end pressure wise? 1X should be easy to discern, how high the pressure was- not so much…. At this point I would say pull it all down, deprime, and recycle the brass. Not worth screwing around with if 75% is showing the ring…. Just asking for trouble. BTDT in pulling down 4k of loaded .223 (I didn’t load it). It sucked, but how much do you want to hazard 50,000 PSI or more pressure going off in a casing that you know is junk? It is one thing for a casing to separate when you hit it with 50,000+ PSI inside it. Quite another when it separates from practically no force at all being applied to it. Don’t torch your chamber or your face and hands…. The few hundred of the federal I have fired so far out of my AR do not show the ring, but that does not mean it is not happening. I have only had that one fail. The 75% of the failures was only in this 50 pieces of brass I shot out of my bolt action. It was about 75% of 50 pieces. |
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Are all of them the same headstamp? I've seen this type of case failure quite a few times, but always isolated and WAAAY less common that longitudinal splits which are usually at the mouth, sometimes on the body. I've always chalked it up to a case loaded one too many times... if you are getting a high percentage of them, agree I would stop and figure out what is going on via all the stuff suggested above to identify the specific problem.... something is definitely off if it is happening that much. |
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Odds are as was mentioned at least twice it’s a headspace issue…….not the rifle side of the equation but the ammo side. Simply put most dies are able to push shoulders farther back than is desired. You will get exactly that failure and sooner with some brands of brass. For autoloaders I want 0.003-0.004” +/-0.001 of actual free headspace between the chamber and the ammo. For bolt guns I like around 0.002”+/- 0.001” I have written this out many times before. The button ejector holds your case shoulder to the chamber shoulder. When you fire the internal gases push the case head rearward until it stops at the bolt face, compressing the ejector. Simultaneously pressure is exerted in all the other directions, expanding the case to the chamber walls, the neck outward and pushing on the base of the bullet. Since your already pinning the brass shoulder to the chamber shoulder before firing the case must stretch until stopped by the bolt face. The easiest give point is where the case is thin…….where your cracked rings are showing. It can only take so many cycles before case failure if the stretch is a lot. If you’re over 0.008” it’s a lot in my book. The worst I saw was a RCBS FL sizer in .223 Rem that was 0.015” shorter than my chamber. The RP brass let me known by partially separating like your complete separation in just a couple firings. That was right around the time I signed up here. I was learned on the issue on online boards. Strip your bolts, measure your actually gun headspace even if you have to add tape to your go gage case head. Measure the product of your sized brass. The difference is your actual headspace. If it’s not under 8 thou or better yet my personal standard of 4 thou you are not going to have much brass life. Any service that processes your brass is going to lean toward making your cases smaller from base to shoulder datum because they have no idea about your gun. Probably a commercial small base die even. Fine perhaps if it’s shoot it once and leave it lay. |
The only hyphenated names I like are cartridge names......30-06, 30-40, 38-55 etc.
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Originally Posted By dryflash3: That's where 223 cases separate about mid case, it's just different than 308, 30-06, ect. That brass was oversized. My guess as well. 30 seconds with a comparator and you’ll know for sure. I had the same thing happen when I was new to reloading and followed the fudd lore of screwing the sizing die down until it contacted the shell plate then another 1/4 turn. Once fired LC brass, could barely see the ring forming but it was easy to feel with a paper clip. Came to the forum for help and got myself a comparator; sure enough -0.015” under a fired case. 500 pieces of brass in the trash and a lesson learned. |
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I guess you could say 4 things changed the way I started resizing and reloading my brass. A set of electronic calipers The Hornady comparator An electronic powder scale A Garmin chronograph. I started reloading in 1976. I never had a reloading mentor. I have had to learn everything the hard way. Trial and error. Now we have the internet and we can ask questions I was only guessing at. Feel free to ask more questions if you have any. I have had to pull apart a bunch (as in several thousand) loaded cases because they were not accurate and they were never going to be accurate. Now is the time to improve your skills before you have to undo some previous work. I'm not here to sell Hornady products but I seem to use a lot of what they sell. Along with RCBS and Lee. Get the best you can afford and you will never go wrong. kwg I will edit to throw in a cheap bore scope as well. It will let you know if the problem is your chamber or the barrel. kwg |
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