Has anyone ever had a handloaded case rupture while firing?

[1badbadger]

I just recently made a simple mistake while sizing some cases, and asked for some help on this site on what to do about it.

It got me thinking. How likely is it for a handloader to make a mistake to cause a ruptured case during firing? Has it happened to anyone here? If a case does rupture, I realize there could be serious injury. How bad of a mistake would need to be made for serious injury, as compared to just getting the crap scared out of you?

If anyone has had a case rupture, I'd like to hear their story.

 

[1000yardstare]

Handload case ruptures for me have been with pistol cases such as .357 mag. F/L sized so often with a carbide die that the brass work hardens to the point of brittleness.

Only rifle ruptures I have seen are due to putting the wrong case in a chamber. Hard to believe that someone would fire a .30/30 cartridge in a .303 British rifle. Rim allowed firing pin to contact primer. A very startled shooter.

That is just one of the genius moves I have seen on ranges and in hunt camps over the past 50 years.

Worst rupture seen was a .308 fired in a .30-06. Smoke everywhere. Thought the rifle had blown up. Hard to believe the firing pin would reach the primer but the extractor must have held it back enough and the .308 is a straighter case than the .30-06 so maybe more friction in the chamber? After the dust settled the rest of us on the range tried to calm down a shaking shooter. He had got his ammo and rifles mixed up.

None of these guys noticed the cartridge difference while loading.

Anyway, these reflections may not have answered the original question but there is usually a straightforward answer to a problem.

 

[357Mag]

...handloaded case rupture while firing?

1BB -

Howdy !

My encounter w/this phenom, came when I was handloading a .224" calibre wildcat of my own design.

After many reloads of the same cases and having done only neck sizing; some case "sticking" compelled me to try FL sizing on the cases.

My brass had apparently " work hardened ", and the next firing after FL sizing produced " insipient case head seperation ".

What I found a crack near all the way around the case, just above the case " web".

One case DID have it's head seperate completely, but ONLY after firing ( while operating the the bolt to extract the fired case.... the case head pulled off ). Apparently, case wall tension on the chamber wall was enough to retain the majority of the case.

As a result, I no longer FL size any of my rifle brass.
I now simply bump the shoulders a thou' while neck sizing; then have at it.

I can see where one could run a similar drill, then have the case head " blow-off " upon firing the round.
Most modern bolt rifle actions have provisions for just such occurances. My Wichita WBR1375 has 3ea vent holes incorporated into its bolt.

Action venting should preclude any major disasters, and proper orinetation of the venting channel should help avert damage to the shooters eyes. ( I said SHOULD ).

Better... to not over-work the brass, esp as annealing is typically applied to the upper ( and not lower ) portions of the case; once brass leaves the factory.

Best of luck in your endeavors.

With regards,
357Mag

 

[Johnboy]

I have had Fed. brass to separate in a 308 before.and that was on a second fireing.thats when I found out that ed. brass was softer than any other brass.so now I stay away from it.and I have blown out a primer pocket before in a 6.5x284.my friend had just built one and he had little info to go by.and one of his loads was with 50gn of 4064.needless to say it was the best group out of that rifel.so yea I have had a few bad days at the range.but hear to tell the story.and Iam thankful for that.one up for GOD.

 

[SS427]

I had a case rupture, but it was not a handload or a centerfire. It was a 17 HMR rimfire. The case came apart at the rim almost like you had taken a razor blade to it. A small chunk of the green plastic like primer came down through the magazine well and lodged in my hand. Another chuck of this primer, or so we think, flew back and hit a person behind me. I felt a puff of air hit me in the face. No fragments, although I was wearing shooting glasses, so I'm not positive about that. Didn't feel anything hit my face other than the air though.

The bullet lodged in the barrel. It blew the clip apart. It stripped the screw out of the wood that held the little cosmetic silver frame around the clip in place. The firing pin was broken off. The rim of the case was blown apart and the case was lodged in the chamber. I sent the gun back to Savage at their request, and the rest of the ammo to CCI at their request. Never found out what went wrong, but CCI bought me a new gun from Savage because the stock was so damaged and the firing pin was destroyed. Everything ended up okay. I was a little nervous shooting my 17 HMRs for a while, but that has passed.

I would hate to think about what would have happened had this been a large centerfire, which leads me to another story.

I have two Weatherby Vanguards; one in .223 and one in .22-250. While cleaning, I managed to get the bolts swapped around. Surprisingly enough, these two bolts fit perfectly in the other gun, so I didn't have a clue I had made a mistake. The next time at the range I shot the .223 first and it shot perfectly. It just wouldn't extract the case because the bolt head was a different size. I did this three times before I figured out what I had done. I think I got very lucky on this little error. What blew me away is the three shot group was pretty small.

 

[Mikem]

Most of the above posts refer to case cracking, complete case head separation and primer blow out, and this may be what the OP is referring to. But there not going to blow up the action. And I wont address using the wrong ammo.

If your using an appropriate type of powder, its almost impossible to get a double charge in a rifle case, the case wont hold it. However using the wrong powder type can destroy the action at a minimum, like a full charge of pistol powder in a rifle case, and its all over.

This is why they print burn rate charts. And cracked cases will almost always show signs of impending failure, so check them.
But cracked cases, and head separation don't stress the chamber, it just let smoke and crap out from places its not supposed to come from. And send you looking for a broken case extractor, and maybe a clean pair of shorts.

Under normal discharge the chamber takes all of the internal pressure, the brass holds nothing, it just acts like a gas check, but blown primers can scare the hell out of you, and damage the extractor.

Reloading is not for kids of any age, its serious stuff, double check the type of powder and charge weight, and inspect your cases before reloading. Don't allow any distractions when reloading and follow all safety rules, and you should be good to go.
Mike.

 

[gary0529]

Had one happen in a Win. 70 .243 years ago.

Eventually I (good gunsmith actually) found that chamber had been reamed slightly off center from factory.
Explained crappy accuracy and constant battle re-sizing FL cases.
Once it was returned to Win.(U.S. Arms) all was well.

Gary

 

[Mikem]

Gary, did Winchester replace the barrel on your 243? I don't know how they could repair this otherwise.
Mike.

 

[tenring]

Separation near the web, and just above the belt, is not unusual in magnum cases. Usually happens with work hardened brass. I have had this happen quite a few times, but no injury to me. With the rupture that far back, the burning powder column usually goes forward, not to the side.

 

[Laurie]

As other people have said, overworked brass is the usual cause, compounded by over-heavy full-length resizing that sets the shoulder back too much.

This is a particular problem in rimmed and belted designs as they headspace at the back end and the manufacturers often leave a lot of room at the front end of the chamber. In a lot of such rifles it's important to set the die to treat the case as if it was rimless and has minimal clearance between its shoulder and the chamber wall. Usually they shoot better too if handloaded this way.

I've seen a lot of case-head separations. Here in the UK, the Lee-Enfield series rifles are very common in both .303" and the heavier Number 4 action rebarrelled to 7.62mm. Not only is the 0.303" cartridge rimmed and chambers are usually very slack up front, but the Lee design is rear locking and the lugs are not symmetrical in size either, so the bolt flexes in one direction. FL sized 0.303" brass with maximum loads has a life of say 2-6 firings depending on the case make.

The .30-30 in leverguns is similar as a rimmed case in a stretchy rear-locking action and so is prone to separations, but usually with much longer case life as pressures are moderate.

When converted to 7.62mm (and I mean 7.62mm - the Lee action is marginal for the NATO cartridge, but really pushed with a true .308 Winchester maximum load) the cartridge is now rimless, so there is no issue with fit in the chamber if handloaded properly, but the bolt flex is still there. A mild to medium .308 load equates to a maximum .303" (45,000 psi) and case life is short. I used to see the first incipient separations after 4 firings with Winchester or WW Super 308 brass. Some cases would go double that partly due to the inevitable pressure variations in any load, but also because the bolt would flex in one direction allowing the case to stretch more on one side than the other. if a case was fired in a different position relative to the chamber / bolt each time, it lasted longer - if it fell that it always went in the same way, separation happened much quicker. Unlike belted magnums and similar where incipient / full separations are usually straight across the case at 90 degrees to the axis, these cases would usually have a wavy line higher on one side than the other because of the asymmetric stretch.

What do I mean by 'incipient'? That's where the damage is mostly done but the case is still in one piece. if you take a piece of soft metal, bend it and work it backwards and forwards around that bend, you get a line of wrinkled metal where it's going to fail. That's what you see as an incipient separation, sometimes right around the case, sometimes only on one side of it. Load and fire it again and it will definitely break along the fault line

Had a separation? Once in a 7.62mm No.4. There was no obvious damage, the case-head and web still acting as a breech plug. An old friend of a previous and more cavalier generation (long since departed for the Great Range Elsewhere) used to have up to half a dozen separations in his .303" No.4 as he worked his brass to death. He never came to any harm, but it's hardly desirable either for safety or the condition of the rifle chamber walls. Nowadays, an alert RCO would pick up on this and rightly stop the shooter.

I hope this helps,

Laurie,
York, England

 

[favload]

I once had a very bad experience shooting a friend's 45ACP handloads. The gun was a new S&W 1911SC that had lessthan 100 rds through it. I was on maybe the 15th handload when the gun came apart in my hands! I was wearing leather gloves thank God. The SS slide was cracked, the grips blew apart , the mag was blown out and the ammo inside had the bullets pushed in. I got a face full of powder burns etc. It was one of those SHOCK moments. The person who loaded the ammo was a life long reloader and the ammo was not hot loaded. To this day i don't know what happened because everyone tells me you cant put enough powder into a 45 case to do that?? I sent the pistol to SW because i suspected a problem with their slide, maybe a micro fracture that slipped by. After they kept my gun for a month they told me there was no way their product could have had an issue. They refused to pay for the gun and in short wer not the greatest folks to deal with. I wil never buy one of their products again. In short, bad things can happen.

 

[cliffy]

Rupture sounds more painful than merely splitting a neck on a case. Was the cartridge of the same dimention as the rifle denoted? Vital info is stamped into the barrel so as to avoid mis-matching ammo with rifle. YES! I had one .223 Remington case-neck split. It was a PMC case with only one prior firing; beats me as to why this freak happened. It is almost impossible to double-charge a .223 case, since one charge generally fills the case to near capacity. Using the wrong type of powder might account for such a RUPTURE. Cliffy

 

[cliffy]

Mikem is correct, and I may have duplicated his statement using different wording. No, I've never experienced a rupture to date. Cliffy

 

[Laurie]

I'd tended to think too only of case separation which while technically a rupture may not be what 1badbadger meant - ie catastrophic case failure.

Over the years I've had and seen case neck and even body splits - invariably brass hardness related and often linked to overly slack chambers in old military rifles. Work the brass enough and the neck will split sooner or later unless it's re-annealed over the neck-shoulder area - not a practice I'd care to get involved in but some handloaders do.

Neck splits are no problem safety wise, and they don't even always thow the shot out of the group. As you go back down the body towards the case-head, the seriousness of a split or rupture rises. Hatcher's Notebook has a page of diagrammes and notes on how the US Army categorised case failures in '03 Springfield days.

I saw a guy once with a Mosin-Nagant M1891/30 and surplus 7.62X54R ammo where every case split from around half way up the body through the shoulder to the neck right through to the case-mouth. Simply old East European (or maybe Chinese) ammo probably originally poor brass and/or badly annealed and hardened further by age. It's the age-hardening effect on case-brass (especially in the neck that is holding the bullet under tension and so hardens faster) that sees armies sell off unused military ammo as surplus after 10-15 years storage, not concerns about powder or primer deterioration. In this case, the rifle obviously had a really slack chamber too looking at the fired cases - no need to mike anything here to see the expansion! There was little if any safety risk in firing it, but he would have eroded the chamber walls if he carried on - not that this probably would have had much effect on this not exactly precision made piece of work!

I've seen four catastrophic case failures in around 40 years of shooting - never had one myself apart from a close shave I'll mention. Two failures were .22 Long Rifle - one ancient copper case cartridges in an equally ancient budget and probably worn-out single-shot rifle; the other new match ammo in a top grade single-shot target rifle during the early 1980s. Both times, the case failed at the rim-body junction and the shooter got a cheekfull of gas, grit, and molten brass that left them scarred for a few weeks. Luckily neither had an eye injury, but both needed hospital attention to wash the right eye out and check it over. Not nice! It's salutory too when you see how much effect the tiny .22LR has if it lets go, and makes you think about the effects of a .308 say! Neither rifle was damaged.

The third was a .223 Rem handload in a Savage 110 MBT target rifle in the 90s. The shooter had a batch of five test handloads and could hardly open the bolt with the first. Despite having all the classic over-pressure signs he carried on 'to get rid of them' and number five failed around the primer, blowing the extractor off. The case-head stayed in one piece luckily for him, but the primer pocket looked like a large-rifle example. He was lucky in that the rifle was tightly enough breached to keep the case-head together and that it was just the primer that let go. The extractor hit him square between the eyes and cut him deeply, but an inch either side would have seen an eye lost! The rifle was undamaged amazingly enough and is still in use with a new extractor. It also funnelled most of the gas away, so it was just the rifle part that hit him - look at the Savage, it's a very safe action with gas baffles behind the lugs and a gas-bridge at the rear of the bolt just like Mauser's M1898 to save people in this situation. Initially while dazed he showed one or two of us the case, then collected his wits and left the range quick before anybody seized his rifle and fired cases as they should have. He never has said what the load was.

The other complete failure I've seen was a .308W F/TR rifle at Bisley last October with heavy bullet handloads that blew the action - the front receiver ring failed. The shooter on the next peg got hit by a piece of extractor but wasn't seriously hurt - just a bruised cheek. The UK NRA has the rifle, fired and unfired ammunition and is carrying out a full techical investigation as to the cause(s) still.

My close shave - some elderly (1980s vintage) Norma sporting .270 Win 130gn PSP factory cartridges in a Brno ZKK600 stalking rifle. I knew there was a possible issue over these cartridges and the dealer who had them knew he shouldn't sell them, but nobody knew exactly what it was so I undertook to test a carton of 20. (It was expected that they had over-tyhin necks that would split on firing.) Nine shots went OK - good groups, MVs where they should have been. Shot 10 was identical - bullet in the group, MV in the same range, nothing out of the ordinary in firing it. Then I could hardly open the bolt. The case-head had expanded as far as the chamber would allow and the primer fell out of the case on extraction - soft brass in the case-head. No damage apart from some slight erosion of the bolt-face around the primer ring caused by escaping gas. The Brno was a fine Mauser based action and coped well, so no real risk, but not exactly desirable. This is what you can't guard against - a flaw in the case at the manufacturing stage. The pressures were obviously OK on the bullet strike and chrono readings, so it had to be the case.

Laurie,
York, England