Ron AKA, thank you for the information. I will now set forward on annealing some 280 cases (.308 and 30-06). I have received allot of great info about annealing from many fellow knowledgeable people from all my previous posts. One thing that I truly can ay is thank you to whomever advised me to get a case tumbler. Hand cleaning all of that brass really sucks. Also does anyone know if the raw 180 gr bullet can be tumbled to remove some air tarnish? Will the bullet just sink to the bottom of the bowl and sit there?
Splitting necks - whats the cause?
- Thread starter Nosler06
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Sorry, no I don't. My point was to warn Nosler06 that the stock answer he was receiving (work hardening) was almost certainly not correct. I have never seen anyone do much work to show with certainty what causes case cracking, which is why I am doing my own. I have no doubt that there are several mechanisms out there, and I don't want to suggest that because my cases are failing one way, everybody else's must be failing the same way.
Ron AKA has a good point in that regardless of if the failure was SCC or one of several other mechanisms, annealing could be an essential step in mitigating it. In fact, the reason cartridges are annealed today is because of the experience of the British army in India almost a century ago (in fact, this experience is how the phenomenon of stress-corrosion cracking was discovered, and it is mentioned in virtually every write up on the subject). What I hope to explore some day is the question of if cleanliness is just as effective, if not more so. I am curious to know if the new trend to wet tumbling in stainless steel media will cause an extension in brass life, by virtue of rinsing away whatever corrosive soot is on the inside of the cases before it has a chance to cause problems.
I was onece given a brand-new box [of older vintage] of Super-X 270 ammo, loaded with the 130 grain original silvertip. In that unfired ammo there were 3 rounds that had necks that were cracked longitudinally from the mouth of the case right to the juncture of the shoulder. You could remove the bullet from the case with your fingers.
Since these cases showed no sign of any corrosion or improper storage, and since all the rest fired normally without cracking when fired, there are things going on that we cannot fully explain.
I have ceased annealing brass, since most of it lasts as long as I expect it to under the conditions it is exposed to. I have some 244 Remington cases that have been fired over 25 times, and have yet to lose a case. Mind, these have been fired in the same gun, and only full-length sized about every 5th firing. Regards, Eagleye.
Since these cases showed no sign of any corrosion or improper storage, and since all the rest fired normally without cracking when fired, there are things going on that we cannot fully explain.
I have ceased annealing brass, since most of it lasts as long as I expect it to under the conditions it is exposed to. I have some 244 Remington cases that have been fired over 25 times, and have yet to lose a case. Mind, these have been fired in the same gun, and only full-length sized about every 5th firing. Regards, Eagleye.
That failure sounds like classic stress corrosion cracking. Other than the Indian Army case I've never heard of it before or seen it, and I have collected some pretty old cases. My bet would be that Winchester did not properly anneal the necks on those cases. Forming a case requires very severe working of the brass, with very high residual stress. If they left them that way without annealing, then with a little assistance from contamination, they could fail just sitting there from SCC.
That is one of the reasons why Lapua brass is favoured. You can just look at the brass and see the colour change still apparant from the annealing process. No question that it has been annealed when you see that.
