Was looking over the brass I fired today at the range and noticed a piece of brass with powder burns. Upon closer inspection it is split.
I’m Pretty surprised to see this, as this is only the second loading for this particular case. It was loaded with H335 and Hornady soft points and CCI SR primers. It was a LOT of mixed brass reloads, so 1/100 isn’t too terrible, but I don’t load a ton of RP brass and will be loading less of it from this point forward.
It shot and ejected normally and I noticed nothing at all abnormal when firing the rifle. (HK MR556)
Pictures below, needless to say I’m not at all impressed with this brass. Anyone find this unusual for RP brass?
RP brass tends to have a slightly thinner case than most other brands. Could have exacerbated a flaw in a bad piece of brass. That said, it looks like case head separation… except for the fact that the split is halfway between the web (where you expect find signs of separation) and the shoulder.
RP brass has always been pretty good for me. FC brass is what generally has the thinner web. And in any case, Soft wouldn’t be the cause of splitting, Brittle/Work hardened would more likely be the reason.
But split necks just happen every so often. I just toss them and move on.
Yep. Since you can’t see the pics I’ll describe it. Typical lateral line that looks like you cut the case in half with a little torch. Nowhere close to the neck. Usually the break is close where the bolt head and chamber meet but sometimes it’s closer to the middle of the case like this one.
I’ve had like 3 or 4 of these out of maybe 50k rounds. I think there’s just some rare, bad cases… or I’ve scooped up some brass that someone else bumped the brass too much.
I’ve never had it happen on a hot load though. It’s always been on .223 pressure blaster ammo.
Someone posted a link to a forum with this explanation. It sounds the most plausible when using high quality brass.
Case head separation happens when we fire a case over and over and when it has room in the chamber to stretch. If a rifle has excessive mechanical head space a case can do this on one firing. Another way is if we push the shoulder back way to far and create “artificial” headspace, or excess clearance in the chamber. It adds up to the same thing. The case has too far to stretch and it thins near the case head.
These were 22.8 grains of H335, thanks for the link Taliv, will check it out later tonight. Mag length seating depth and no other obvious signs of pressure.
All cases were individually weighed and filled on my ChargeMaster.
I load 100 cases at a time and after I’m done charging I check the levels with a flashlight at least twice, for uniformity of powder depth, before moving on to seating. I spose I could have missed one but that is not likely and the primer above doesn’t show signs of pressure.
I’ve reloaded a lot of .223 for AR-15’s over the years, but I have not had a case rupture like the one in your photo.
When I reloaded .223 for my HK-93, I did have a few rupture like the one in your photo. Fortunately, I did not get any gas blow back to my face, so I just tossed them and moved on.
Case failure is a very good reminder to wear safety glasses when training.
It looks like there is slight cratering in the primer, but I wouldn’t worry about that too much. It’s not typically a tell-tale sign of an overpressure situation. I trust head swipes more than primer signs. Unless the primer is flattened/flowing of course.
Maybe I overlooked it, but I didn’t notice where you mentioned what bullet you were using? With 22.Xgr of H335, I’m assuming a long heavy bullet like a 77gr. H335 is a little fast for the long, heavy bullets, but you definitely should not be getting these kind of failures.
I’m still betting on the brass being sized too much for your specific chamber and having too much room too expand. Do this a few times, and you will find the weak spot in the brass. Just my opinion.
55gr Hornady Soft Points in this batch. I don’t use H335 a ton, but I picked some up when it was about all I could find for this caliber.
Thanks for all the comments and advice. This might have been one of the batches I under sized and resized a while back. Given that it is H335 that sort of fits the timeframe when I bought the new set of Redding dies and was having some trouble getting them adjusted properly. So there is a chance that had something to do with this one. I’d expect more than one if it was a pervasive issue with this set of loads.
I derived that load from a Hornady manual that lists 23.4 as max load for that bullet, if memory serves. I’ve found Hornady manuals to be a bit on the conservative side however.
