BANG! Oh! That's a little disconcerting.

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Dark Skies

Dark Skies

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Took my old but good nick M44 Mosin Nagant to the range yesterday. I'd just finished shooting the last of my handloads with no problems. I then started on some milsurp rounds (marked with 3 * 10 52) which I believe to be of Bulgarian origin. Ten rounds in there was a much louder report and a distinct escape of gas from the breach / bolt area. "That don't sound right!" I looked at the fired case and saw three tiny sooty cracks just above the head spaced evenly around the circumference. "Mmm - must have been a wrong 'un." I fired a few more and everything seemed ok. About another ten rounds in the same thing happened. At that point I felt it prudent to pack it in for the day. Anybody else experienced this with Eastern Bloc ammo? The cases are actually brass and not steel. This batch came in the those cute little gift wrap packs of twenty. White crepe paper tied up with string. I'm guessing the 52 means they were manufactured in 1952. Does brass age and become brittle over many years? It's something I've never come across before - I generally reload with modern brass and components so I have no frame of reference.
 
It doesn't store very well. I am not sure why but my guess is the chemistry of the primer and or powder rather than the brass. It sounds like yours may have been inconsistently loaded as well.

My experience has been with Czech or other EU cartridges in 9mm which fail to fire, FTE, etc. I had a new gun at the range earlier in the year and thought there may have been something wrong with its accuracy as the grouping was terrible. Then I had a few FTF and FTE and this was coming out of a Winchester "white box", of which I had a pair in my attic. I don't know if I got it at a gun show or stuffed the boxes myself, but during this incident, I thought that it was too weird for Winchester and I picked up a few rounds and noticed a red primer ring, then some characters that looked Russian...

I swapped to cheap US stuff, also stored in my attic but not for quite as many years perhaps, and it worked perfectly. Many of the Russian, EU cartridges would fire with a second hit from the hammer, one or maybe two did not and were discarded.
-Bill
 
My understanding is that this happens periodically but is not a danger. If no one pipes up here to say for sure, I would check the ammo section of Gunboards.com and see what they have to say.
 
I've got a tin of that stuff and probably fired about 30 rounds of it. It's about a same age as your stuff, and it's never done that with me. Have you shot any other surplus ammo through your M44?
 
did you check all the ammo before you shot it. I have the same stuff I think and every once in a while I'll find cracks in the case near the bullet.
 
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But as it was a finnish m28, it held up nicely, no damages whatsoever to the gun.
 
Wow...
Is that a brass plated, steel casing? It must be a really hard alloy if it's solid, perhaps more like bronze if it had corrosion and cracks like that in it. I've not seen a softer piece of brass crack in that manner before.
-Bill
 
Copper washed steel. Used to get some surplus stuff that would look like that in my Mosins back when I had them, though never QUITE that eroded. Get a broken shell remover.
 
As long as they're extracting ok it's somewhat safe to assume a brass problem rather than a pressure problem. Doubly so if you didn't notice more recoil than normal.

I've seen this with some older milsurp stuff myself and IMO it's probably a combination of age (micro-cracks from years of expansion\contraction and maybe a little corrosion), metallurgy (quality of brass, annealing and forming) and the good possiblity that your chamber could be a little tighter.
 
Heh. Nothing as bad as that pic of Medusa's. The cracks in my cases were tiny pin pricks. All the ammo looked fine externally prior to shooting. I've since looked at the remaining batch and that all looks fine too. I'll pull the bullets for use in reloading and ditch the powder and cases. Whilst the Nagant is built tough as nails and can take this sort of thing it doesn't look good at the NRA range to have cases burst. There's a hell of a to do if a home loader's round bursts should the range officer get wind of it and I can see no difference if I were to intentionally take ammo to the range that I know is a bit iffy.
 
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After the fail to fire and FTE rounds of the Russian/EE 9mm that I used earlier which the range fellow said was probably Czech made, I made a bit of a joke about it with him. "Well, if we ever get into it with the Czechs, we will kick their ass!"...
-Bill
 
I have had copper-washed do that from time to time.

NOTE- the Russian copperwashed is a diff story, that stuff fires great, never spi yet
 
I have issues with it with copper washed steel cased rounds that come in little white cardboard boxes- not sure of the origin off hand.

It'll happen about 10% of the time with those rounds. Worst one was a split from the neck opening to about 1/2 way down the cartridge, but no nasty gas escape or anything.
 
Yes, felt some gas puff just once in about 600+ rounds, using only the older (gray cans) and newer green (oval) Bulgarian. Have only noticed about three cases with small cracks (don't often look), but no ftfs. Lots of mine was sealed in '52.

My two MN 44s are supposed to be stout rifles. The only frequent gas puffs I feel are using cheap, brand-new Remington .22 ammo (in the old Savage), which was shipped recently from the "All-American Rem". plant near Little Rock, AR. Much worse than ancient Warsaw Pact munitions.
Ironic?
My choice for reliability consists of "Commie" ammo, old or new, and rifles any day of the week:D. Plus a Chinese SKS and Ruger carbines.
Just shot some Russian Silver Bear jhp today in the Mini 14, blasting pieces of grapefruit out of the water.
A lot of our ammo needs to be brought UP to Russian, Bulgarian standards. I've only needed my shooting glasses once for the MN 44, but about every fifth round with Rem. 22.
 
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I got some surplus ammo before that out of 40 rounds( 20 pack's paper wrapped) only 6 rounds fired and one out of the six had been struck twice. Now I buy Silver Bear ammo.
 
Yep. I had one let loose on me in a PSL. Blew the top cover off, and bowed the magazine. That was with copper washed Czech silver tip. I've had similar issues with Polish surplus as the contributor above posted with that photo of the busted up casing.

IMG_0127.gif

IMG_0127.gif

IMG_0125.gif
(This last one shows the headstamp, bxn, which is Czech in origin).

You must remember that these countries surplussed this stuff for some reason. Then we eagerly bought it not knowing the reason.

For quite some time I have been holding the rifle responsible for this catastrophe because it lacked a safety sear. Perhaps I was wrong, and it was the ammo itself?
 
I have now removed the offending batch (150 rounds) from storage and pulled all the bullets. I took something of a scientific approach and measured fifty of the loads to check for consistency. I was actually quite surprised at how accurate these were. All were between 48.9 and 49.7 grains. The average across these fifty worked out to be 49 grains. I thought that was pretty good for 1950's military ammo.

I used an inertia hammer to remove the bullet heads. Most came out with two sharp whacks on my workbench. However, roughly one in six needed more whacks to remove them. Often as many as five to seven whacks.

The bullets are 184 grain FMJ boat tails with a lead core.

Ninety-eight of the cases were in perfect shiny condition inside. Fifty-two had signs of white fluffy oxidation in places.

All of the powder came out as good as new with no signs of clumping together.

It seems to me that those oxidised cases in conjunction with the slightly tighter bullet are the ones that were giving me grief.

I will definitely be re-using the bullets again. I'm also tempted to re-use the powder in modern cases given that it is all from the same batch and I know the average factory load. I was thinking a reduction to 48 grains would be a safe bet. Anyone think this is a bad idea?
 
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I was actually quite surprised at how accurate these were.
Click to expand...
I did this not long ago as well, although I only did it with a couple rounds of each variety I currently have. They were quite consistent. Also did the same with a few rounds of surplus 5.45 I have and those were consistent as well.

Out of curiosity, what are the bullets? Heavy ball or light ball? Steel core or lead core?
 
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