My AR fired brass cases have tiny dents on them - how big is too big?

LeviSS

New member
Quite a few of my fired cases have tiny dents on the sides. They were shot out of an AR, so I don't know if it is something to do with the ejection system or what. They are very, very tiny. Is this normal? Can they be used? How big is too big for a dent?

I'm just getting ready to get my first batch of reloading going, so I'll have several questions I'm sure. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grinning-smiley-006.gif
Thanks!
 
a picture would help, but chances are that they are fine if your definition of "very, very tiny" is similar to mine. Pictures would be a must to give an estimate.

RB
 
I'll see what I can do about a pic, but I'm thinking that it'll be very hard to get it to show up.

They are very uniform about where they are located, so I'm guessing it is fairly normal for an AR, but not sure.
 
After 20 pics or more, two showed the dents. They look slightly bigger in the pics than in real life.

brass1.jpg


brass2.jpg
 
Had the same problem with mine. I put a piece of stick on velcro on the face of the brass deflector and it solved the problem. Another fix is to trim off a little of the ejector spring.
 
I have shot brass with HUGE dents... I just FL sized them to make sure that they would chamber.

90% of the time, the dents blow out and give you a perfect case... when they don't blow out, the round still shoots fine.


.
 
Reload'em, shoot'em again, the dent will be go away for a nano second, then come back again. Reload'em and shoot'em again, the dent will go away for a nano second then come back adgain.........repeat as often as possible. It's an AR they dent brass, don't worry.
 
I have an H-K .308 that puts a big crease in every case (plus throws the brass about 50 feet). I size them and shoot em till I lose em. If the case mouth isn't cut it doesn't seem to hurt a thing.
The dents in your pics are no concern, mine are at least 8 times that deep.
 
The dents won't do any real harm to the cases and you can just ignore them, or you can fix the prolem. Your ejector spring is to long or strong and should be trimmed a couple coils, usually. The strong spring is snapping the ejecting case against the barrel locking lugs as the case is pulled from the chamber. The location of the dents is a dead giveaway to this problem. If you chamber a resized case and slowly pull the bolt back, you can see the side of the case hit the locking lugs. The spring should be just long enough to fully extend the ejector plunger. If your AR-15 flings the empty cases 12-15 feet, it's a good sign that it's to much. After tunning the spring length, my cases all go into a small pile 3 feet to the right, at about the 3 o'clock position with no case dents whatsoever. It is a very easy fix with detailed instructions at:

http://www.gswagner.com/arejector/arejector.html

Hope this helps.
 
Quote:
I have an H-K .308 that puts a big crease in every case (plus throws the brass about 50 feet). I size them and shoot em till I lose em. If the case mouth isn't cut it doesn't seem to hurt a thing.
The dents in your pics are no concern, mine are at least 8 times that deep.



Ain't that the truth. lol! After seeing the big creases my HK and Galil makes on brass I've never even noticed the marks an AR makes on brass. Like the fellas above said, load em' up.
 
Thanks guys. I didn't think that it would be a problem, but thought I'd check to be safe.

Thanks for the link for the AR ejector mod. I'll have to do that next time I take it apart.
 
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