Palma brass pressure signs?

[broncman]

I did a quick search and did not really find anything. Getting ready to start my load workups on 200 and 215 Berger's. What are the first signs in Palma brass? In large primer Lapua brass using Wolf or Tula primers, I watched for ejector marks as overmax.

Is it the same for Palma brass or is it way dangerous before ejector marks with Palma brass?

 

[aloreman]

i measure case head and web expansion. if your getting swipes your already over pressure

 

[CH Luke]

Besides physical examination of each fired brass on its way back to its place in the box for pressure signs there's one other thing to consider. One part of my routine that has helped me is after cleaning, annealing and sizing I line up all 100 of the brass from the original box in a tray facing down. The box records how many firings.

Takes less than ten minutes to gauge all 100 primer pockets. Doing it every time you get a feel for them starting to loosen. If I had a couple of hotter test charges in that 100 you can almost feel which ones they were. Once the gauge slides in don't think I pitch. Especially if you know you're running fast loads.

From the this step to measuring length, trimming, etc.

 

[rmist]

What gauge are you using? A machinists gauge pin? What sizes?

 

[CH Luke]

Swage Gage primer pocket gauge. Sinclair has them. Small for Palma.

 

[CH Luke]

Just out of curiosity, how "loose" is a primer pocket if the No Go end of the gauge will fit into it? Will the primer fall out of the pocket, or is it somewhere in between? I typically assess the pockets by "feel", but this seems like a handy tool to have if it doesn't lead to throwing out cases where the primer pocket is slightly loose, but not totally gone.

On full size where I've just retired 3/400 from last year once the "no go" makes it all the way in I'm seeing about 2-3 primer blows on the next shot out of 100. Assuming my charge stayed the same the next time double that. I stopped there. $80 started looking like a great deal.

This year I'm all Palma. With some of the load testing we've talked about this last couple of months I've found one charge 0.3 gr higher (looking for the top of that "3rd node") that I could discern significant difference with the gauge on the second shot on that brass. The no go gauge was starting to fit on 3 of 5 from that charge. I'm about 0.6 gr under that charge now where I did all of my jump testing and very happy.

So I did some thinking about how to efficiently gauge the primers every time and that's what I came up with for my routine (above).