split necks

Greyhunter

New member
Long story, a buddy has a reloader friend (who I dont know) and he gave my buddy some of his reloads to give to me to try (unsolicited). Apparently the guy was curious to see how they shot in an AR, my buddy must have told him I had one.
I dont plan to shoot them but I took them for inspection out of curiosity. They are labeled .223 Rem, 36g VG (assuming varmint grenades), 22.7g of H4198, CCI BR4, 2.924 OAL (that was closer to 2.265" on my caliper). Its labeled as one fired Win brass which looks correct, and reportedly from a bolt gun which also looks correct by the clean cases.

Question is, in that 50rd box there are 22 fired cases, of which 2 have necks split to the bottom of the shoulder. Those split cases measure under 1.760", so they arent excessive length. I noticed all his spent primers are not flattened but do have a noticeable ring around the firing pin dent. I'm not an experienced reloader per se, but I've reloaded a couple thousand .223 and never split a neck yet. What about his combo is causing him to split necks?
Edumacate me please...
 
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Old brittle brass is the usual culprit.Sounds like they are not once fired brass. Although I have seen lately several pieces of factory ammo once fired with split necks in 22-250 brass.
 
The case necks need to be annealed.

Usually new brass is able to be reloaded many times before it becomes "work hardened". However, I have got batches of brass that I would get almost 10% split necks with the first firing. If you reload alot, you will eventually run into some split necks, and have to know how to deal with them.

Go to Varmint Al's Reloading page on his web site. He has a very good tutorial on annealing.

By the way, I anneal every 4th reloading of all my cases. Some bench rest guys anneal every loading to help control tension on the bullet.

Jim
 
I recently found some .204 & .223 brass that I bought new and had a couple of necks split after the second loading...I usually buy a 1000 at a time and just open and use 1-200 at a time..

I annealed the whole batch and haven't found anymore..It's just my supposition that either the company changed their recipe for their brass composition, or their quality control may have slipped on that run...

There for a while, a lot of the metals were running in short supply worldwide..and a slight change in manufacturing could save them a whole bunch over a year's time..
 
Like I said, this isnt my brass. I was just going by his load card that showed it as once fired brass, so I wondered if something else could have been causing it. It could be a bad batch of brass or the load card could be inaccurate.

Thanks for the answers.
 
Well, a few years back I had a couple of cases split after the first firing. It was new Winchester .308 brass and it was loaded quite a bit below maximum.
I did all the work myself, and I shot them, and there wasn't anything unusual in how they felt, sounded or grouped (they were very accurate, actually).

I didn't find the splits until I was back home, prepping them.
I never did anneal the other cases in that box, and got several reload cycles (before I lost them, my rifle spits brass about over the horizon).
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No more split necks on any that I found, so there was something weird about those two.

So what you're seeing isn't unheard of, and doesn't require any kind of extreme pressure, in SOME cases.

I kinda started avoiding buying new Winchester brass after that, because it was not only more expensive, it disappointed me.

What brand are you seeing this with?

But I agree with pdhntr, annealing them would most likely salvage the cases that don't split on the first reloading. I still don't figure I should have to do that before I start using them, since they're new.
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Originally Posted By: Evil_Lurker
What brand are you seeing this with?




This was Win brass, which has always worked well for me.
 
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