Was at the range today to get a little practice before the first sevice rifle match this year.  I cut the trip a short due to some problems with 2 case/head separations.  Attached are some pics.

My AR is a Compass Lake DCM upper (1x8 Douglas bbl) riding an Olympic lower with FN internals.  Gun has approx. 1400 rnds on it and shoots EXTREMELY well.

I started shooting on bags to re zero my iron sights.  Round 13 produced alot of smoke from the magwell as well as an unusual report.  Grabbed the spent round and was surprised to see it ruptured.  Broke the AR down and checked it over as well as I could at the range.  Everything looked tight.  Fired a few more rounds.  Round 27 same as 13.  Checked the brass and it too was ruptured.  Gathered my stuff and headed home.    Once home I grabbed the headspace gauges and checked it.  Headspaced just fine.  I cleaned the crap out of the 'whole' gun and checked the headspace again, good to go.  I have never in like 12 yrs of reloading had this happen with any of my rifles and or my reloads.

Was shooting LC99 brass with WSR primers, a Win. 55 gr. FMJBT over 25 gr. of N135.  Been shooting this load for ever with no problems in all 3 of my .223s.  Brass was on its second firing and in good shape.

First thought is to break down all the practice ammo I have (150 rnds) and toss the brass, powder, and primers.  Start with fresh components and go from there.  Second thought is maybe something is wrong with the rifle and I can't see it.

Anybody have any suggestions or ideas??  If I haven't provided enough info let me know and I'll remedy that.  Thanks for looking!!

Brian   hug.gif


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Pic #2

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Can you take some closeups of the headstamp face area?

Guys, I really suck at photography but I did the best I could in a hurry.  Here's a couple pics.  If ya need better I can try again.  Correction to the above.....brass was LC 99 and LC 97.

Brass was purchased from Scharch.  Was once fired military.  Came reamed, cleaned, sized and trimmed.  Very well could have been MG fired.  I have gone through approx. 750 rnds of the 1K I ordered.  No case head separations in the lot till today.  I clean them in corncob and resizing force on my end was normal.  Thanks for the replies!!

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Quoted: Brass was purchased from Scharch.

That is all you had to say.

For some reason I cant find it now - but several years ago Scharch let out a LOT of bad brass - and people were getting these failures.  I searched the archive but cant seem to pull anything up right now.

Someone will remember the deal better than I.  IIRC, it was resized overzealously and led to the premature failures.  They got a black eye and a bad name in brass for a while.

This lot of 1K was from a large purchase a couple friends and I made about 5 years ago.  I finally got around to start using this last 1K mid season '05.

I don't really mind throwing the remainder out if thats what I got to do but I can't help wonder if the gun didn't suffer some damage I can't see.  I've seen another shooters gun come apart from a separation, not pretty.  He lost darn near the whole upper.

Anyway, looks like I gotta go and start pulling down that ammo and cull the rest of that brass.  Thanks for the replies!

Brian

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