Old Dominion brass-how safe???

guninhand

guninhand

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I recently experienced case failure in a Dominion 43 Mauser case. I purchased the case as factory ammunition, and this was its first reload. Someone told me that older Dominion brass had mercuric primers and that this can cause brittleness. True??

The factory ammo box had the typical blue and yellow color scheme as was used in the sixties. How far back did this color scheme go and would it have been back far enough to have been used for brass with mercuric primers?
 
How did it fail? A neck split, a head separation, or? Mercuric primers are reported to cause case brittleness, but i would very much doubt if this is the case here.
 
I once had a couple of "case failures" that I tracked back to a sealing compound used around the case necks. Apparently someone thought they'd waterproof the cartridges by applying a red sealant on both the case necks and primer seats. After thirty years or so, the bullets were chemically bonded to the case necks and pressures became astronomical.

I've experienced that with both old Dominion (in .30-06) and (less old) Remington 130 gr. Bronze Points in .270 Win. Both resulted in dramatically blown primers, and pulled bullets from other cartridges in the same box showed the red lacquer. They were damn hard to pull!
 
I've seen a lot of Dominion brass in the brass bucket with split shoulders. I've had it happen with not that old Imperial marked .303 on it's factory firing.
Only brass I've ever seen split at the shoulder.
 
not that many years ago i seen a lot of 30 30 shells split on the neck. i consider imperial brass the worst on the market and and when sorting i throw this brass into a box and sell it for scrap, it is worth more scrap than to reload the junk.
 
The older CIL Brass headstamped "Dominion" was generally not too bad brass, but had a fairly shallow "Web" that allowed failures in certain action types when pressures are up a bit. The later IVI Brass marked "Imperial" was inconsistent from lot to lot, and one needs to take that into consideration if you decide to use it. I have some older 300 Savage "Dominion" cases, that are standing up very well. I also have a P14 303 British that I load for and have a lot of Winchester and Military IVI cases for. All these are working fine, and I cannot fault the IVI cases, since they are of only 3 lot #'s and they all seem quite good. It's a bit of a crapshoot, but I have found that the cases that are difficult to full length resize are the worst to use. They seem to be not as soft, thus more brittle. Regards, Eagleye.
 
The .43 MAUSER CIL brass is of the balloon head style, definitely not as strong as solid head designs. Also the .303 British and .30-30 Winchester are not really a true guage of, if brass is good or bad, there are quite a few .303's with very loose or generous chambers and many .30-30 WINCHESTER 94 with headspace problems because THEY ARE SO WORN.
 
Well I will have to go a little contray to some. I have had several bad experiences with old Dominion/CIL brass. The ones you are talking about sould like 1950s vintage, and in my experience thier brass was crap. I have had head failures on a few types, some 6,5X54 was the absolute worst. Frankly you couldn't offer me enough money to reload that old junk, maybe enough to fire it the first time (bring lots of money), but after that, its trash.
It seemed to me thier brass became brittle, or at least less flexible, and would not expand at the case head. I honestly can not think of any other 1940-60 ammo that I would rate as bad as theirs.
 
I have used lots of it and never had a problem. In fact I sti9ll find some every once in a while in my stuff and just load it up with the rest.

Rembo, I will shoot the 244 up in my Browning single shot. :D

Ted
 
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