Follow-Up On Yesterday's Range Time

[JimT]

Raining again this AM so I sat down at the bench and sized, de-primed and neck-expanded the .357's I fired yesterday.

IMG_3616.JPG

Of the 150 + or - that I shot, when sizing them I found 5 that were split. Two had long case splits and 3 had shorter neck splits.

IMG_3617.JPG

IMG_3619.JPG

These are consistent with the brass work-hardening from expanding when fired to being resized to neck expanding and finally crimping. It works the brass and eventually it hardens and will crack, as most all of you know. Case life could be extended by annealing, but I have so many cases I gave it up years ago. Some of these cases I have been reloading for close to 30 years and I cannot complain.

Rarely I have had .357's split in the body of the case, not the neck. These cases had been used quite a bit in high pressure loads. This is not one from yesterday but happened a couple months ago.

IMG_3620.JPG

Finally .. Just Because ... here are a few of my reloading manuals. I always try to encourage new reloaders to READ THE MANUAL .. MORE THAN ONE OF THEM!

IMG_3622.JPG

[piller]

Following the manuals is a good idea when working with things which could explode.
There are a lot of folks who know much more than I do about reloading, and then there are people who think they do. For example, those who know enough to push the envelope but keep their hand intact while coming up with new cartridges are the ones who know what they are doing. Those folks at the range who lose fingers from a catastrophic failure often were reloading without following a recipe.
I have only had stiff extraction one time ever from my reloads. I did have some loads I bought at a gun show that took a Kahr semiautomatic apart. I probably shouldn't have, but I single loaded them into a Ruger P85 just to verify that they were the problem. The P85 held together, but all 5 rounds I tried were so overpowered that the cases all came to pieces. Totally into 7 or more chunks of brass. The case head was the only part mostly intact. The primers completely came out. I think that 5 rounds removed at random from the package gave me a true picture of how they all were.

[JimT]

Scary stuff Piller! I came near one time .. not with handloads. I got some "Seconds" from a man who worked at a popular ammo company. They were .41 Magnums and I was shooting them in my Bowen Custom pistol. They seemed "hot" and I had really hard extraction on one chamber. Looking at the brass I could see a long scratch mark starting about 1/8 of the way up from the rim extending to the case mouth. Shining a light in the chamber I could see the area under the bolt notch was bulged. I had to have a new cylinder made for that gun.

I fired 3 in my .41 Magnum Marlin 1894. They went 1600 + or - ... 1600 + or - ... 1950 and blew the hammer back to half cock! I boxed them up and sent them back to the factory with an explanation of what had happened. I never heard from them again. They were probably afraid I was gonna ask them to pay for the new cylinder.

[Griff]

I've had many splits in the body of the case like your 3rd photo in my 45 Colts from the excessive size of the chambers in my 45 Colt rifles. I have no idea how many times I've reloaded these cases, but no way are these "high pressure" rounds. Velocity is ~850fps range from the 24-¼" bbl with smokeless, and maybe 900-1000 fps when powered by black powder.

[JimT]

I've had many splits in the body of the case like your 3rd photo in my 45 Colts from the excessive size of the chambers in my 45 Colt rifles. I have no idea how many times I've reloaded these cases, but no way are these "high pressure" rounds. Velocity is ~850fps range from the 24-¼" bbl with smokeless, and maybe 900-1000 fps when powered by black powder.

Yessir. As you know, oversize chambers really work the brass. I have had Colt SAA or two that did the same thing.

[piller]

That is not the same as what happened with those 9mm rounds. Case splits are just something that can happen. Catastrophic failures that turn a nearly new Kahr into a few parts shy of a handgun are not just case splits. That Kahr was still under warranty. It came back with everything new but the barrel. That P85 acted as if it could do that all day. Nope!!! 5 rounds coming to pieces was plenty to convince me to stop.

Only stiff extraction from a handload that I made was a 30-06 round. The chamber is snug with all brass, but not tight. It was new once sized brass. Turns out I had failed to double check weights and loaded a few up about 1.5 grains over max. The first one was hard to turn the bolt. Really hard. I put those away and pulled the bullets at home.

[Walt]

A decade or so ago I had a pressure incident with an AR SP-1. I loaded some rounds with standard loads but had neglected to check the brass for stretching. I was shooting at a hardened steel gong and the velocity was so high from the case mouth being crimped into the bullet that the bullet went almost through the gong and the primer pocket was half again its original size. I always check overall case length nowadays. No damage to the gun but it was a good lesson.

[AmBraCol]

I got some old 38's from a friend up in WA state, from the headstamp they were probably from the early 20th century. They did a longitudinal split, my guess is they'd been fired with mercuric primers which embrittled the brass and lead to a target load being sufficient to split the case.

Going the opposite direction, chatted with a friend for whom I'd tuned down his Hammerli Pneuma PCP air rifle. It was a LOUD spitter of lead with a steadily diminishing muzzle velocity. No curve to the velocity chart at all, just a free fall from shot to shot. I got it shooting around 800 fps with 8.4 gr pellets and with a decent Bell Curve to the chart. He finally took it to the range, shot it four times, hit the target four times but quit because he was sure it was broken - it was too quiet. He did confirm the pellets left the barrel, but he didn't check the pressure in the tube. So it looks like I get to check it out for him again.

At any rate, whether it's up or down, if there's a drastic change from the normal in your shooting experience, stop and check.

The brass that gives me most fits with splits over time, however, seems to be nickel. It doesn't seem to stand up to lots of reloads like the straight brass cases do.