i sat down to reload some 6.5x54 M/S tonight and discovered that a lot of my brass was cracking in the neck when it was sized. i have 3 different headstamps, Dominion, U.C.Co, and the last and problem ones are just stamped 6.5mm. i measured and they are 6.5x54.all of this brass is at least 60 years old, that i recovered from pulling apart factory ammo. this was it's first loading. i'm guessing age is the reason why it was cracking? not exactly cheap or easy brass to find...
cracking necks
- Thread starter kevin.303
- Start date
You may want to try annealing your brass case necks with a propane torch; stand them up spaced roughly an inch or so apart in cold water whose depth comes just below the shoulder (say 5mm or so?), heat one case's neck/shoulder to a dull red, then tip it over into the water with the head of the torch.
Lather, rinse, repeat - until all your 'test cases' are finished. After that, hopefully they won't crack. This is something I saw years and years ago in an old Lane Pearce article on neck annealing to prolong case life... hopefully it works for you.
-M
Lather, rinse, repeat - until all your 'test cases' are finished. After that, hopefully they won't crack. This is something I saw years and years ago in an old Lane Pearce article on neck annealing to prolong case life... hopefully it works for you.
-M
I have heard of brass "age hardening", like some aluminum alloys. the annealing might work on the necks; but I'd start to worry about the heads. You definately don't want them cracking under pressure.
If you read my posts here in the reloading forum, I tend to be one of the experimenters and risk takers. But I think this is one of the risky-tricks I'd let pass on by.
If you read my posts here in the reloading forum, I tend to be one of the experimenters and risk takers. But I think this is one of the risky-tricks I'd let pass on by.
You will need to anneal future brass on a regular basis, but first throw this lot of brass away and start anew as you will find others in the batch are also beyond redemption.
A good rule of thumb when reloading....when in doubt piss them off and start again.
A good rule of thumb when reloading....when in doubt piss them off and start again.
Just for what it is worth, if you heat those necks till they are red hot, they are actually a bit too soft. You may be well advised to get a heat crayon to mark those cases with and then quench them at the color change. This way you can get the exact temperature needed to anneal those necks without making them too soft. If it were a more readily available case, I would say dump all those old cases and buy new, but sometimes it's necessary to save the harder to get ones. Regards, Eagleye.
x2 here. I found it wasn't all that easy to get precisely the correct temperature too and heat crayon helped judge this. Another thing that might help a bit too is to use two propane torches and heat from both sides of the case at the same time. As I recall, heating was just a bit more uniform that way.
