Can split cases do immediate damage?

Bought some old Remmington ammo. Some of the cases split. Tried the CCI ammo with no splitting at all.

Guy said to toss the "bad brass" into the trash.

It was accurate and trouble free otherwise. How quickly could the hot gases damage my chamber on my new Sig? Is there another reason not to use up a hundred rounds of this 185 grn ammo?

I would shoot the rest of it. I have had literally hundreds of cases split in the same 45 with no damage to the chamber. I reload 45 acp brass until it splits or gets lost, whichever comes first, and have never had any problem other than a dirty chamber.

Most of the time with good brass it takes in excess of 20 loadings to split the brass. Must be a bad lot of brass that you got........

It's not that big a deal I suppose. I knew a reloader who continued to use split cases he claimed. I guess the chamber is the biggest part of holding everything together.

In a centerfire rifle caliber...pretty quickly. In one of the magnum revolver calibers...probably so. .45 ACP...If split cases in that caliber were critical, all the barrels in my beaters would have died long ago. I average finding at least one split case in my much-abused range brass every time I shoot...which is often. Not a good thing, to be sure. Flame cutting of the chamber is always a possibility.

The higher the pressures and the larger the volume of the gasses, the more critical it becomes, of course, but since I haven't noticed any damage whatsoever in my pistol chambers, my theory is that the splits are occurring
at the bottom end of the curve, just as the pressure starts to fall off....like the brass reaches its elastic limit just as the bullet exits. Theory of course...
no proof of the puddin'.

Split cases in my 9mm, 38 Spec, 45ACP, Carbine and .223 are fairly common.

I reload my brass until I see a problem or the case splits.

Even new brass can split.
I had 100 new Winchester 44 Magnum brass split with about a 3/4 full load.

A friend had a bunch of Remington military 38 Special FMJ that had a lot of cases split.

I knew a reloader who continued to use split cases he claimed.

I knew a guy like that, too. He made a practice of setting aside the split cases and firing them at the end of each shooting session.

One day there was enough gas blow-back from the split case in the chamber to ignite a split case in the magazine. That ignited another case and another. The grip panels were blown off, the frame was warped, and gun was ruined.

Just remember that your holding what is essentially a contained explosion.

Anything that is less than perfect goes into the dumpster. Why risk hurting yourself or your pistol.

45R said:

Just remember that your holding what is essentially a contained explosion.
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Yep. A one-ounce fragmentation device goin' off about 18 inches from your face. (If you're lucky and the gasses and shards don't get into the magwell
and set off a few more. Then it varies by the number of rounds in the mag.)

..........Think about it......

Anything that is less than perfect goes into the dumpster. Why risk hurting yourself or your pistol.

Brass is cheap, but have you priced fingers lately? :eek:

Big difference between firing ammo and finding that the cases have split vs. reloading split cases!

If a case splits during reloading I generally shoot the round unless the split goes well below the base of the bullet. I discard split cases in the cleaning step of reloading if they get picked up at the range.

--wally.

A split case might get reloaded once in a while but someone that is reloading split cases isn't paying much attention to what he's doing.