Something Strange

[jb77]

A couple of days ago I was shooting a 22-250 and upon returning home and putting everything away I noticed something very odd.All of the fired brass had split necks so i decided i would check the unfired rounds and the necks on those cases were split too.

My reloading records indicate that I reloaded these rounds May 21,2005, right after I had returned from Iraq. My records indicate that these cases had been fired 7 times and they had been annealed and neck turned after the 5th firing. I only just clean the necks up removing very little material.

My conundrum is this, what would cause the cases to split after they were reloaded but before firing.

I am a very experienced reloader and a split case may elude my preloading inspection every once in awhile but there is no way I would have missed 40 out of 50. I do a post loading inspection, so I know the moly coated Berger flat base bullet didn't split the cases on loading. They were loaded over 35.5 grains of Varget and this is not a compressed load.

My reloads are stored in MTM cases in a cabinet that only has ammunition, no solvents of anykind. The cabinent is in my reloading shop and it is not heated or air conditioned unless I am in there working, but it is well insulated to moderate the temp extremes.

Ok guys help me out, have any of you experienced or heard of this. Any opinions or ideas are appreciated.John.

 

[2506]

I don't know what happened in your case but I was given an old box of WW factory 30-06 ammo once and upon looking at the rounds over half had a cracked split neck. I have been hand loading and shooting for over 30 years and never heard of your problem.

 

[billmo]

JB, would that brass happen to be Win? I have seen this a couple of times but not that many pieces at one time. It seems strange that it happened to brass that had been annealed and prepped as you have eluded to. I am not picking on Win. brass but I do know for a fact that the older Win brass was thinnner than most brass that I measured. I had bought 50 pc. of .308 brass and after once firing run them thru my Deluxe Redding neck sizing die and when I started to seat my bullets they fell in the case. The only way I could use them was to full length size them. And of course after measuring the neck wall thickness I understood. Bill

 

[jb77]

Bill it was Remington brass. Also the funny thing is that these rounds were grouping great.

Out of a factory Rem 700 VLS they were shooting into less than a half inch at a 100 yards.

 

[billmo]

That is a little odd. I've never seen that in Rem brass. But in this game you have to expect surprises often. Bill

 

[Tommie]

Had the same thing happen. After checking several things and communicating with several others on this board, I determined that it was a bad lot of brass.

Tom

 

[CatShooter]

jb77...

I had the same thing happen under the same circumstances.

I had returned from a dog shoot and had a batch of loaded ammo left that was loaded for two different rifles.

Cases were neck turned to ~0.009" and 0.010". In hind sight, they didn't need to be turned that much - hell they didn't need to be turned at all - I made the cases in my anal BR days, when you turned everything :,

Some of the cases had been once or twice fired, but most of them were never fired.

The ammo was stored for a while,got married, had a Rat, got divorced... etc).

Took the ammo out to shoot, and found that a fair amount of the fired cases had splits.,??)

The splits looked funny - not torn apart like usual splits, they were hairline cracks. When you looked at the case, you couldn't tell it was split, until you loaded it again, and saw the gap.

When I pondered this for a while, I looked at the old loaded ammo, and found that a lot of it,~30%) had "T" splits, with the "T" at the place where the base of the bullet was seated in the neck.

So I pulled all the ammo, and threw away the split cases, and loaded some of the others... many of them,~20%) split on firing :,

SO I took what was left and annealed it... same thing :,

So I tossed the rest in the trash - it was a shame, cuz in total, it was over 1,500 pieces of hand turned brass, most of it unfired.

I have no "definitive" answer to it.

I don't turn brass anymore except for one rifle,a .262" 6mmBR), and I anneal brass after I turn it.

I do know whatever it was, annealing it years later, didn't help.

I think that those cases that I pulled that were not split... had the beginnings of a failure already. I can't say why, just a gut feeling.

The brass was all bought at about the same time,1979), and was stored loaded for a longish time... I don't know if it was the stress, because it was before "Bushing dies", so the fit of the bullet in the neck was probably -0.008" to -0.009", which is a lot by todays standards.


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[jb77]

Thanks all,Catshooter these were sized with regular dies and yes the splits are very fine.

I wanted to make sure for the most part that it wasn't my storage technique.

I shoot alot of 22-250 how these rounds slipped by without getting fired for 2 years is beyond me. I have several 22-250's as does my son and he frequently helps himself to Dads ammo. It is our preferred round for almost everything.

Anybody else please feel free to weigh in.