case head separation?

[Jay Christopherson]

This is sort of a new situation for me- I've never really experimented with loading that much, just playing it safe to re-create factory ammo as much as possible for my hunting rifles. However, I decided to see if I could find a better load for my custom .270 Win,blue printed Rem. 700 action)shooting Barnes 130gr. TSX.

I loaded up a range from 52.0gr to 55.0gr using Barnes's recommend powder of H4350 and GM210M primers. All seemed well at the range, all the way up to 55.0gr. and I settled on 54.3 gr. as being the best load. None of the loads showed any obvious signs of pressure issues- no flattened primers, no ejector marks, nothing...

However. When I got back and cleaned up my fired cases for another round of loading, I found this on EVERY case:

Hopefully it's easy to see the bright ring near the bottom of the case. This is brand new,first firing) Nosler brass.

Am I crazy or is this showing incipient case head separation?

 

[BoydAllen]

Straighten out a large paper clip and bend it at the end so that an eighth of an inch is at a right angle. Use this to feel for a groove on the inside of the case, opposite the bright line. Another thing that your might do is to check the difference in 'headspace' between fired and unfired cases.

 

[Jay Christopherson]

I checked out the interior with a paperclip like you suggested and I am not feeling any sort of ridge or roughness anywhere.

 

[Jay Christopherson]

That stripe you see is just reflection and bad camera work. I will do as you suggest re: the coat hanger, thanks for the suggestion!

 

[Innovative]

Headspace separation is very easy to avoid. To start with, it can only be caused by excessive chamber clearance,at the shoulder).

I make an inexpensive tool that measures the chamber clearance that YOUR handloads will have in YOUR particular chamber. It gets this information by comparing one of your handloads to one of your fireformed cases.

Check it out on our website WWW.LARRYWILLIS.COM

- Innovative

 

[RJinTexas]

Larry,
I received my new Digital Headspace Gauge early this week and I was very impress with how sturdy it is, the quality and how easy it is to get repeatable readings with this tool. Is Sure does beat digging out my old Stoney Point tools and attaching parts to my calipers and fumbling through all the inserts to find correct one, then having to fussing around measuring the same case multiple times to insure that I didn't cocked the brass somewhat in the insert which easily will give you a .003 variance. Thanks for a designing and marketing this trouble free instrument at a fair and reasonable price. Folks try it I assure you you'll like it.

Regards
RJ Hamilton

 

[Innovative]

RJ .......

Thanks for mentioning our new Digital Headspace Gauge.,It's always good to hear from our customers.) We devised a better way to solve this common problem after hearing from so many shooters with headspace separation problems. I designed our Digital Headspace Gauge to be simple to operate, and able to give much more consistent readings.

Another important feature is that unlike the RCBS Precision Mic, our Digital Headspace Gauge works on ALL calibers. Anyone can read all about this tool on our website.

- Innovative
www.larrywillis.com