so yesterday I was shooting my .223 tikka sporter and had a case separate about 1 inch forward of the rim load was 24 grains of IMR 3031 cci small rifle primer and a 40 grain hornady v max in lapua brass, primer looked normal not flattened at all any Ideas is this one in a million ? I have about 80 more loaded rounds im 2 grains under max according to lyman 49th edition thanks
.223 case seperation question
- Thread starter aklavik
- Start date
x2 just a bad chunk of brass. It happens every so often
Extremely unlikely to be a bad piece of brass if it's Lapua. Their QC is second to none. I've had Lapua 308 brass go 30 reloads at max levels when I was competeting in Fullbore. Never heard of any competitors with bad Lapua brass.
The most likely scenario is the case was previously fired in a rifle with excess headspace.
The most likely scenario is the case was previously fired in a rifle with excess headspace.
Thanks Heddok I have never experienced this with brass cases before what is the danger factor with case separation as described ? would you shoot the remaining 80 rounds or discard, I very carefully weighed every charge to 23.9 to 24 grains exactly with my 12 year old son double checking on a digital lyman scale , thanks
You over resized your cases creating excessive head clearance, meaning your bumping the shoulder back too far. This excess resizing will allow the case to stretch to meet the bolt face when fired, normally you only bump the shoulder back .001 to .002 on a bolt action and .003 to .004 on a semiauto.
Below is an animated image of a rifle cartridge firing and the case stretching to meet the bolt face, if you only push the shoulder of the case back .001 or .002 the brass is elastic and can stretch this far without any damage to the case
Now look below at the sizing operation and the blue, red and green dotted lines, now look in the center of the photo and the words "shoulder setback". Your full length resizing dies are made to "setback" the shoulder of the case so it will fit in any chamber when the die makes hard contact with the shell holder. The problem with this method is it can shorten the life of the case by excessive "shoulder setback" and creating too much head clearance.
Below is a Colt Field headspace gauge, at 1.4736 that I used to calibrate my Hornady cartridge case headspace gauge.
Below the Colt gauge is is in the Hornady gauge and reading true headspace.
Below is a fired case from my AR15 rifle.
Below is the same case after sizing and .003 shoulder bump.
The above cartridge case is .003 shorter than my chamber and it will stretch and spring back without thinning in the base web area and cause a case head separation.
I use competition shell holders that are .002 to .010 taller than a standard shell holder, the one pictured below is .004 taller than normal and the one I used when sizing the above 5.56 case. Meaning this shell holder prevented me from "OVER" resizing this case and bumping the shoulder back .007.
I don't have case head separations because I use more than a bent paper clip to measure case thinning.
Below is an animated image of a rifle cartridge firing and the case stretching to meet the bolt face, if you only push the shoulder of the case back .001 or .002 the brass is elastic and can stretch this far without any damage to the case
Now look below at the sizing operation and the blue, red and green dotted lines, now look in the center of the photo and the words "shoulder setback". Your full length resizing dies are made to "setback" the shoulder of the case so it will fit in any chamber when the die makes hard contact with the shell holder. The problem with this method is it can shorten the life of the case by excessive "shoulder setback" and creating too much head clearance.
Below is a Colt Field headspace gauge, at 1.4736 that I used to calibrate my Hornady cartridge case headspace gauge.
Below the Colt gauge is is in the Hornady gauge and reading true headspace.
Below is a fired case from my AR15 rifle.
Below is the same case after sizing and .003 shoulder bump.
The above cartridge case is .003 shorter than my chamber and it will stretch and spring back without thinning in the base web area and cause a case head separation.
I use competition shell holders that are .002 to .010 taller than a standard shell holder, the one pictured below is .004 taller than normal and the one I used when sizing the above 5.56 case. Meaning this shell holder prevented me from "OVER" resizing this case and bumping the shoulder back .007.
I don't have case head separations because I use more than a bent paper clip to measure case thinning.
The cases below were resized as per the instructions with the resizing dies, meaning the full length resizing die was screwed down until it contacted the shell holder and then a 1/4 turn more. The problem with this test is the headspace of the rifle was never mentioned so total shoulder bump is unknown or the head clearance.
What the above test shows you is not all brass is the same quality and hardness in the base which helps prevent stretching and case head separations. And without shoulder bump measurements the test is nothing more than a ball park test of the brass.
What the above test shows you is not all brass is the same quality and hardness in the base which helps prevent stretching and case head separations. And without shoulder bump measurements the test is nothing more than a ball park test of the brass.
I've seen that before. I've seen it on Remington, Winchester, Privi and Lapua.
What is not coincidental is that all of them were from the same hand loader.
I'm not going to fault this fellow because he was a newbie and was very meticulous in his methods and followed every instruction in the Lyman 48th manual as if they were from God. He was petrified that he would do something wrong and cause a Kaboom.
He even annealed all of the brass before he sized and loaded it. I saw the cartridges he put together. They were lovely. He had polished the brass to a bright sheen, the bullets were as straight as any I have ever seen. Looked as good or better than most of the stuff I see from experienced loaders.
He was building it for a Mini 14. Nice rifle, stainless with a heavy barrel and it shot really well.
Someone gave him a half dozen boxes of once fired brass that came from different makers.
He decided to reanneal all of it before resizing and trimming to length. So far so good. Then he full length resized and polished all of the cases, primed, filled with powder and topped them off with 55 grain FMJs which he had in a bulk bag of 500.
They looked good, they shot very well and they chambered flawlessly. He was happy.
The first batch worked so well, he immediately re loaded all of his empty cases. He left out the annealing step because the cases were sizing nicely. Repeated everything else though, except for trimming to length. They all went through his go gauge nicely.
Again, great job. He shot off half of them and had exactly the same problem you describe with 2X reloads. He brought me the rifle to take out the part of the case that was stuck in the chamber. He was devastated. He really likes his Mini.
It isn't as easy to get a stuck case out of a semi as it is a bolt action. Not only that I didn't have a 223rem stuck case extractor. Not a big deal, a few minutes on the lathe and with some careful hacksawing we had something that would suffice.
When we got the remainder of the case out, there was nothing at first obvious to indicate what was wrong.
Like you folks, I suspected it just might be a one off. I had a rifle to sight in so I went back to the range with him to make sure everything was locking up properly and because he is good company.
He had about 50 rounds left and he shot off about half of them and he got another case separation. Yes, we brought the extractor, rod and mallet. Then he fired off the rest of them just to get rid of the loaded rounds. He had every intention of throwing all of the cases away.
Remember, he had polished all of the cases shiny bright before re loading them. There was nothing to indicate a problem on the cases. By the time we were finished with his hand loads, we had four case head separations in all.
He had one round left and I asked him not to shoot it.
The rifle I was sighting in, was also a 223rem. It behaved immediately and only took 5 rounds to get it on target.
That means I had about 45 rounds left. I asked him if he was willing to shoot my hand loads in his rifle. The first five went through without an issue and grouped very close to where his loads grouped. Same for the next 7 mags. By the way, we cleaned the rifle when the groups started to open up. We also didn't let the barrel heat up.
We got back to the shop and compared his loaded round to mine. That's when it became obvious what the problem was.
Because he had polished the cases to mirror bright, it wasn't obvious.
I should have twigged onto how much black blow by was on the case and how far it came down onto the sidewall. Some days are better than others. What else can I say.
He was setting the shoulders back on his cases way to far. So far that he was actually fire forming them a lot with each firing.
We noticed the cases I had re loaded only had a bit of soot partway down the neck.
When we cleaned off the soot, the tell tale advanced shoulder told the story. We went to his place and set up his resizing die properly so that he would only partially resize his cases. Loading for a semi auto, is slightly different than for a bolt action, so neck sizing only is out of the question for reliable function.
The continuous fire forming had caused a stress ring in all of his cases. The stress ring was exactly where he was getting case separations.
This is an extreme case and the OP may not have a similar condition. He really doesn't give enough information to find his issues without pics. Maybe he can find a mentor close by to get some hands on and figure it out with him.
I was typing this while Big Ed was posting. The cases used in the mini were separated about a quarter inch higher but similar.
What is not coincidental is that all of them were from the same hand loader.
I'm not going to fault this fellow because he was a newbie and was very meticulous in his methods and followed every instruction in the Lyman 48th manual as if they were from God. He was petrified that he would do something wrong and cause a Kaboom.
He even annealed all of the brass before he sized and loaded it. I saw the cartridges he put together. They were lovely. He had polished the brass to a bright sheen, the bullets were as straight as any I have ever seen. Looked as good or better than most of the stuff I see from experienced loaders.
He was building it for a Mini 14. Nice rifle, stainless with a heavy barrel and it shot really well.
Someone gave him a half dozen boxes of once fired brass that came from different makers.
He decided to reanneal all of it before resizing and trimming to length. So far so good. Then he full length resized and polished all of the cases, primed, filled with powder and topped them off with 55 grain FMJs which he had in a bulk bag of 500.
They looked good, they shot very well and they chambered flawlessly. He was happy.
The first batch worked so well, he immediately re loaded all of his empty cases. He left out the annealing step because the cases were sizing nicely. Repeated everything else though, except for trimming to length. They all went through his go gauge nicely.
Again, great job. He shot off half of them and had exactly the same problem you describe with 2X reloads. He brought me the rifle to take out the part of the case that was stuck in the chamber. He was devastated. He really likes his Mini.
It isn't as easy to get a stuck case out of a semi as it is a bolt action. Not only that I didn't have a 223rem stuck case extractor. Not a big deal, a few minutes on the lathe and with some careful hacksawing we had something that would suffice.
When we got the remainder of the case out, there was nothing at first obvious to indicate what was wrong.
Like you folks, I suspected it just might be a one off. I had a rifle to sight in so I went back to the range with him to make sure everything was locking up properly and because he is good company.
He had about 50 rounds left and he shot off about half of them and he got another case separation. Yes, we brought the extractor, rod and mallet. Then he fired off the rest of them just to get rid of the loaded rounds. He had every intention of throwing all of the cases away.
Remember, he had polished all of the cases shiny bright before re loading them. There was nothing to indicate a problem on the cases. By the time we were finished with his hand loads, we had four case head separations in all.
He had one round left and I asked him not to shoot it.
The rifle I was sighting in, was also a 223rem. It behaved immediately and only took 5 rounds to get it on target.
That means I had about 45 rounds left. I asked him if he was willing to shoot my hand loads in his rifle. The first five went through without an issue and grouped very close to where his loads grouped. Same for the next 7 mags. By the way, we cleaned the rifle when the groups started to open up. We also didn't let the barrel heat up.
We got back to the shop and compared his loaded round to mine. That's when it became obvious what the problem was.
Because he had polished the cases to mirror bright, it wasn't obvious.
I should have twigged onto how much black blow by was on the case and how far it came down onto the sidewall. Some days are better than others. What else can I say.
He was setting the shoulders back on his cases way to far. So far that he was actually fire forming them a lot with each firing.
We noticed the cases I had re loaded only had a bit of soot partway down the neck.
When we cleaned off the soot, the tell tale advanced shoulder told the story. We went to his place and set up his resizing die properly so that he would only partially resize his cases. Loading for a semi auto, is slightly different than for a bolt action, so neck sizing only is out of the question for reliable function.
The continuous fire forming had caused a stress ring in all of his cases. The stress ring was exactly where he was getting case separations.
This is an extreme case and the OP may not have a similar condition. He really doesn't give enough information to find his issues without pics. Maybe he can find a mentor close by to get some hands on and figure it out with him.
I was typing this while Big Ed was posting. The cases used in the mini were separated about a quarter inch higher but similar.
