Cause for neck splitting?

[Bill K]

If you do a cerrosafe cast of your chamber, follow the directions given and it tells you how and what to do, for the best results. But still anneal your case's regardless.

[SEM]

for my own records 30 minutes after casting is when I take my "final" measurement that way I do it exactly the same time to time, The best option for you is to go to your local gunsmith to have this done.

Anealing frequency for my 221 is every 4th load unless I get a split then will do the whole lot again, I run 150 cases per barrel ( 150 that way if I lose one or 2 I will still have 100 to take with me on a shoot) and keep them separate from each other reloading them only when I run out of the batch so it keeps it easier to monitor the times fired, Not really that difficult just become your routine

I have found that near to max or at max loads give the most consistency accuracy wise so the brass will take a beating, trimming becomes necessary too, but I trim to "MY" chamber length not necessarily SAMMI

Now that you have joined the affliction ( Welcome ) we always like to know that another weirdo like us exists

Forgot, check out the guy on here that sells the induction anealer, THE BEST THING SINCE SLICED BREAD !!!!!!! When I figure out how to find his contact info I will send it to you

Sunny

[mefizto]

Greetings all,

thank you very much for your replies, they are very much appreciated because this will be my first center-fire rifle, so I am still rather ignorant about some of the matters. Therefore, please do not take my following remarks/questions as doubting your experiences, but rather as trying to clarify the issues.

There appear to be two recommendations - (1) anneal cases and (2) make a cast of a chamber.

Re (1) I want to first clarify that the rounds' origin is unknown, they came to my friend with the rifle. Is there a way to tell, whether they were annealed, e.g., by discoloration? What to do with the remaining ones, disassemble them and anneal?

Re (2) How do we evaluate the chamber cast? Let us say, for the sake of argument, that it is out of SAAMI specs? How much is unacceptable?

What about the suggestion by my machinist/gunsmith friend to use machinist's dowels to check the chamber dimensions? I think that he has them in 0.0001 inch increments?

Kindest regards,

M

[SEM]

rounds of unknown origin I would pull anneal and load with new primers and powder,

the dimension you need is the neck, if the rods work and get you a close measurement then you will get at least a close comparision, you ideally should be about 3 thousands over loaded neck dimension but 5 thousands is not uncommon you can use Lapua brass if you need to go thicker, I had one barrel 13 thousands over the guy was using surplus 223? brass and had a no turn neck ??? my best guess

[mefizto]

Hi SAM,

thank you for the advice. Will do.

Kindest regards,

M

[georgeld]

Yep, just as I suspected: Unknown brass!

They've been fired a number of times.

Pull 'em down and anneal IF you want to save the brass
for further use. That should give you 3-6 more firings each.

In the meantime when you can, buy all you can of new brass.

Annealing is a good way to make cases last longer.
BUT: Here's my initial varmint shooting history.
I had no clue about annealing until I got on this board about 20 yrs ago.
I've been reloading since I was 15 back in 1958 and loaded many thousands.
Mostly '06. Until '73 when I got to shooting a new Sako .222mag.

I bought 100 rounds of Rem ammo. Herter's cheap $6 dies. Full length resized every time. I shot those 100 cases until the barrel lost it's accuracy.
Something over 60 times, 6000 shots with those same 100 cases.

At the end, I'd lost two in the field, two split necks, two I crushed in the press. and still had 94 left. They'd never been trimmed, cleaned or annealed.
Maybe a few times I'd see primer cake in the pockets and chipped that out with a sharp point, Yes, they looked ugly as hell. IF the barrel hadn't given out I'd of kept at it the same way. Due to lack of brass and drums full of free .223 brass, I had the new barrel rechambered to .223.

I'd just fire formed 200 .223 cases for it, and bought 100 more new. I'd loaded those but, hadn't fired them. I sold the whole bunch for ?$35 to a fellow that had just gotten a Contender barrel and couldn't find brass. Last I heard he'd loaded and fired the originals twice and was tickled pink to get 'em. SO: some cases and sizes etc it's not near as critical as many others on here seem to think. SSCoyote: do you still have that guys contact info?

In your case: yes, i'd pull those down IF I wanted to use them again. And: clean, anneal and trim them. IF it don't matter, just shoot 'em and do so with the one's that don't split. Pulling many down is a real PITA!
Still buy a few hundred new cases depending on how much you intend to shoot.

IF the brass is that bad, I'd have that barrel bore scoped to see what shape it's in.
Might be the barrel is worn out and time to rebarrel it anyway. Then I'd start with new brass.

Welcome to varmint rifle shooting and the finest gun board on the web.
IF you don't know, just ask here, and it don't matter if it's gun related or not.
There's enough of us on here someone will either know, or at least have some opinions.

Stay safe, then have fun has been my motto for years.

[mefizto]

Hi georgeld,

thank you for your encouragement. Though, I have to say that I am rather confused by the content of your reply. On one hand, you advocate for annealing and, by extension for a care in brass preparation, on the other hand your example appears to suggest that it is not necessary. In that regards, did you not mistyped the numbers? Assuming the same distribution of reloads per case, it calculates to sixty (!) reloads per case. Is this correct?

Regarding the rounds, I will probably disassemble them. One, I am rather afraid to shoot them, since from my understanding, the gas at high pressure is leaking back to the action; two, I would like to keep them for reason of economy due to the fact that I have been acquiring reloading equipment and reloading supplies (among them 200 Lapua cases) so that I do not have to depend on my friend's. I had been advised by another friend what to buy, and since he is an accomplished F-class shooter, he recommended quality equipment which is not cheap. I still need to buy dies - Forster, and 3-4 different powders that he recommended to start with based on his criteria. Since I cannot buy them locally in the smallest 1lb quantities, that means shipping and hazmat fees. Unfortunately, due to the upcoming dental expenses, of which I learnt yesterday, this may slow things down a little.

Thus, I have enough time to disassemble the rounds, clean them, anneal them, trim them and learn in the process. I will also have my machinist friend look at the rifle and if it looks good, I will likely buy it.

Kindest regards,

M

[Dean2]

Slightly dissenting opinion. Your fired brass will give you very nearly as good a read on your chamber dimensions as a Cerakote casting. Fire a couple of factory rounds and measure those, they will give you a very good idea of the chamber shape and size. If you don't have factory ammo, load virgin brass to starting load levels from a loading manual. The slight amount of shrinkage from the actual chamber size isn't a real big deal, if your chamber is over sized or out of round this will easily show on the fired brass.

As far as the necks splitting, I agree with the recommendation to pull and reload all the unknown rounds. I would never trust reloads from someone I didn't know real well. With respect to annealing, I know it is commonly recommended but I have 221 and 22 H brass with more than 20 firings on them that have never been annealed. They were all neck sized 2/3s of the neck length their entire lives.

Annealing will help if you are forming brass, so for instance from 221 FB to 17 FB or 22H to 17 AH, but outside that I have not found it necessary on neck sized brass. That said, if I was getting necks that were starting to crack I would anneal them and if you want to reuse the brass you have that would be a good step to take.

Best of luck and welcome to the addiction.

[Oso Polaris]

As stated by others pull bullets (using either using a bullet pulling collet die or a Kinetic hammer). Dump the powder and make certain to remove the primers... The bullets and cases are only two items that you'll keep.

A word of caution - Primers are cheap so don't try to save them. It is possible to cook off a primer during the annealing process...it is as loud as shooting a 22. There are no shortcuts in Reloading without risk of compromising Safety.

[mefizto]

Hi Dean2,

thank you for the e reply. Having read about fire-forming, I understood that a fired round should give an approximation of the chamber (taking in an account shrinkage). However, I cannot follow any of your suggestions yet. As noted in my last message, I still do not have powder and dies, so I cannot reload, and since I live in California, I am unwilling to pay $19 plus the price of ammunition. Saying that, I believe that measuring the chamber with the machinist's dowels will provide a more accurate information.

On the subject of resizing/annealing, it is my understanding that even when one resizes only a neck, eventually the case will grow and a full sizing is required. Is that correct?

Twenty reloads on a case is really surprising to me. When I did the "economy" of reloading estimate, I used 8 as the figure of merit.

Hi Oso Polaris,

thank you for the advice. I can borrow a collet puller, so that is not a problem. But I am uncertain, how do I remove the primers. If I use resizing die with the rod, will the primer go off? I have to do some reading about it.

Kindest regards,

M