Cracked Casing

[quatin]

Went to the range today and after having that whole experience of hot loads from re-manufactured brass I get another incidence.

The round was Black Hills 55gr. The bullet hit about .5 inch from where I aimed it. What happened here to cause such damage to a case? There was no problem with extraction, both pieces fell out of the throat when I tiled it back. Also it seems quite odd that the pieces have such fine clean cuts.

 

[Third_Rail]

Whoa.

DON'T shoot any more ammo from that box, and contact Black Hills when they open tomorrow. Could be a bad lot.

 

[ReloaderFred]

That kind of case separation is caused by excessive headspace. The shoulder of the case has been set back too far and when it's fired, it stretches to the point of coming apart.

If you loaded these rounds yourself, your sizing die is set down too far for your particular chamber. If the round was loaded by Black Hills, then I would have the chamber of your rifle checked.

In either case, the cartridge case was too short for the chamber.

Hope this helps.

Fred

 

[Ol` Joe]

Fred is right, this is a classic example of head seperation. This normally shows with cases either fired in chambers with headspace problems or cases that have been over sized, usually more then once. I would get with Blackhills and show them the picture you posted.
Complain, this is not a safe load to fire in your rifle. If the ammo checks out OK you should have the rifle checked for headspace, it only takes a smith a minute and is only a couple bucks.

 

[Pumpkinheaver]

Looks like it separated pretty far forward. The ones I've had experiance with where farther back toward thecase head more.