Factory ammo cracks when fired

[Gun Geezer]

Shot my Marlin 336 30-30 Win today using Remington 150gr Cor-Lokts. The first three (only shot 3) brass cracked in the taper from the shoulder up to base of the neck. One of them had two cracks. Now this factory ammo, but I've heard of such with reloads due to annealing issues, multiple resizing, over pressure, etc. The shots did NOT feel "heavy" recoil for a 30-30, so I don't think they are overloaded with powder.

At first I was concerned about the rifle chamber. This rifle is maybe 10 - 12 years old with less than 100 rounds fired. I borrowed 3 rounds from a buddy, fired them, and no cracks. Different brand, I think Federal. Side by side comparsion and to me these LOOK the same dimensionally as every 30-30 round I have around.

Clearly I cannot reload this cracked brass. But is it safe to shoot the rest of the box? I have about 10 boxes of this.

 

[Enfielder]

I’d contact Remington. Keep the box and give them the information on the box. It sounds like an over pressure/overloadfrom the factory. No bueno.

 

[Enfielder]

It could also be a brass defect. Either way, contact remington

 

[troy fairweather]

more then likely because marlin chambers can be huge, and that batch of ammo maybe on the hard side. should be ok to shoot so long only the neck is cracking, just keep a eye out u dont skorch the chamber. but give remington a call they may make it right.

 

[Tommygunn]

^^^^^^^

What enfielder said! Remington may have QC problem they need to chase down. The box the ammo came in probably has a batch # that Remington may need.

 

[cheygriz]

Remington will replace them. Virtually all manufacturers will turn out a bad batch of ammo at one time or another.

I wouldn't shoot any more of them. Let Remington replace them with fresh ammo.

 

[243winxb]

brass cracked in the taper from the shoulder up to base of the neck.

10 boxes of same lot number? Call Remington. To many rounds to shoot in that condition.

Its bad brass that was not annealed correctly at the factory. Or old ammo in storage to long.

Seen same in Fugi (?) 30-06 factory ammo.

 

[Gun Geezer]

Unlikely the same lot number for all boxes, but maybe. Picked it up several boxes at a time over a year. The ammo is about 10 years old, kept in the house (not too cold hot or humid).

 

[Gun Geezer]

I'll go round it all up and try to find the lot numbers on the boxes.

 

[herrwalther]

Contact Remington. Start rolling your own ammo. Lever ammo is very forgiving for how much they charge for it.

 

[redneck2]

ts bad brass that was not annealed correctly at the factory

This^

 

[Mk VII]

You get this with British (& Empire) made .303 (some makes worse than others) that has been around for a long time. Work-hardening of the brass when they cold-formed the neck.

 

[Slamfire]

Shot my Marlin 336 30-30 Win today using Remington 150gr Cor-Lokts. The first three (only shot 3) brass cracked in the taper from the shoulder up to base of the neck. One of them had two cracks. Now this factory ammo, but I've heard of such with reloads due to annealing issues, multiple resizing, over pressure, etc. The shots did NOT feel "heavy" recoil for a 30-30, so I don't think they are overloaded with powder.

At first I was concerned about the rifle chamber. This rifle is maybe 10 - 12 years old with less than 100 rounds fired. I borrowed 3 rounds from a buddy, fired them, and no cracks. Different brand, I think Federal. Side by side comparsion and to me these LOOK the same dimensionally as every 30-30 round I have around.

Clearly I cannot reload this cracked brass. But is it safe to shoot the rest of the box? I have about 10 boxes of this.

Lets talk about Agnotology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnotology the study of culturally induced ignorance or doubt. In short, why don't you know, what you don't know?

I think the ignorance about gunpowder and thus, ammunition lifetime, is primarily due to two factors: Firstly there is no profit educating shooters that their ammunition/gunpowder has a finite (though unpredictable) lifetime. In an economic system based on consumption, there is no profit to be made educating people on what not to buy. Secondly, no one wants to hear it. Humans have an infinite capacity for self deceit and shooters firmly believe that they are going to live forever, and therefore, so must their hoard of ammunition. Both of these beliefs are quite false. At some time in the future, both you and your ammunition are going to be dust, but you really, really, don't believe this. The human mind only sees what it wants to see, so most reading this, will ignore this because it conflicts with their belief systems.

What the OP has not mentioned is the age of his ammunition. Ammunition is loaded with gunpowder, a high energy compound, which from the day it leaves the factory, is breaking down to a low energy compound. As I previously wrote, the lifetime of gunpowder is unpredictable, ammunition companies will only warrant their stuff for ten years, and ammunition near 20 years old is getting long in the tooth. Heat incidentally, is the primary enemy of gunpowder. Deterioration of gunpowder follows an exponential function when exposed to heat. That is, the hotter it is, the faster it breaks down.



Now I have heard all those people shooting 100 year old ammunition, and I will say, shoot enough of that stuff, and you will blow up whatever firearm you are shooting it in, but I do not want to spend time on this unfortunate and undesirable aspect of old gunpowder.



As gunpowder breaks down, it releases NOx,. NOx is a spectrum of nitrogen oxides, I think all of which are highly oxidizing, nitrogen dioxide is particularly irritating, (that's the red stuff in the picture) and if your gunpowder is outgassing NO2, get the stuff out of the house before it autocombusts. But I do not want to spend time on this unfortunate and undesirable aspect of old gunpowder.





What I will address is that NOx, particularly the NO2, that is released from old, deteriorating gunpowder, will attack brass.

These are my cases, all cases ruined by old gunpowder.







Someone else's brass:











Gunpowder deteriorating in the can





The lifetime of gunpowder is so unpredictable that first world militaries spend lots of money paying ammunition technicians to monitor and inspect their munitions stockpiles, and toss out the stuff that is just on the cusp of going bad. This is either a 1968 or 1969 chart, don't remember exactly.




Second and third world countries are so financially broke that they can't afford surveillance programs and so they allow their old ammunition to age to the point that their Munitions Depots have this unfortunate habit of exploding. The frequency is about one a month, somewhere in the world. Big badda boom!



As I wrote earlier, the OP did not state how old his ammunition was. So, I am going to make a jump of faith and say, the OP's ammunition is old. Old enough for the gunpowder to be breaking down, outgassing NOx, and the case neck's are cracking. Is this dangerous? Could be. We are in the realm of trying to estimate how dangerous is it to fly in a plane with a turbo fan jet engine that has cracks in the blades. That's not an easy answer. There are known examples of airplane crashes when turbo fan engines came apart, and before the planes flew, it was known there were cracks in the blades. I was told that every flight, after the first flight, of a space shuttle, there were cracks in the turbo pump fan blades. Luckily, for the turbo pump engineers, the two Space Shuttles that did blow up, did not fail due to cracked turbo pump fan blades. The astronauts died because of other known problems.

When gunpowder is deteriorated it experiences burn rate instability. A fancy set of words, but, old ammunition burns "funny". Not funny "Haw, Haw", but unpredictably. That is never good, and as gunpowder ages, so do combustion pressures. Lots of guns have blown up due to old gunpowder, but the owners, don't know why. Back to Angnotology again. Why don't you know, what you don't know?. The most likely outcome of the OP shooting his old ammunition is that every case experiences a brass crack somewhere. I predict that some of his cases will show high pressure indications. If he is lucky, he won't have a case head failure. Maybe you can see, some of my 223 Remington brass split in the exposed case head, venting gas inside the mechanism. Nothing bad happened, but it could.

I don't always follow my own advice, and someday I will suffer the consequences, but I will recommend, that if factory ammunition is regularly splitting case necks, that the owner of that ammunition stop shooting the stuff. The safest thing to do is pull the bullets, save the bullets, dump the powder out on the lawn, and throw the brass away. The brass is ruined, the gunpowder is ruined, but bullets can be used.

 

[troy fairweather]

great post Slamfire

 

[ontarget]

Slamfire, you are obviously a troll who owns stock in all of the ammo companies and just wants us to dump our ammo caches and buy new stuff. LOL. Seriously, very interesting stuff. I think I need to start inspecting some of my older stock.

 

[Gun Geezer]

Slamfire, that's a heck of post.

The ammo in quesiton is about 10-years old. Stored mostly in the garage where in the summer it gets 105F some days. On average for the year much cooler than that, but your post is well made and point taken. Still, at only 10-years old that seems amazing it could ruin that fast. I'll have to reconsider where I store the rest of my stash! It is sizeable. Maybe I can talk the warden into a cellar behind the house, cause all that ammo sure as heck isn't going in the house!

I don't understand this chart. For each temperature, there are 4 colums with shelf life in years. At 85 F, is the shelf life 15 years or 40 years?

 

[Slamfire]

Slamfire, that's a heck of post.

The ammo in quesiton is about 10-years old. Stored mostly in the garage where in the summer it gets 105F some days. On average for the year much cooler than that, but your post is well made and point taken. Still, at only 10-years old that seems amazing it could ruin that fast. I'll have to reconsider where I store the rest of my stash! It is sizeable. Maybe I can talk the warden into a cellar behind the house, cause all that ammo sure as heck isn't going in the house!

I don't understand this chart. For each temperature, there are 4 colums with shelf life in years. At 85 F, is the shelf life 15 years or 40 years?

I don't know all the products the chart maker thinks have a 30 or 40 year shelf life, but there are a number of different propellants. Rocket motors have aluminized nitrocellulose, small arms have double based and single based smokeless propellants. Single based propellants are smokeless propellants based on nitrocellulose, stabilizers, and various other herbs and spices. The shelf life of single based propellants is, rule of thumb, 45 years, at 68 F. So, look at 40 years at 68 F, then the same stuff stored at 195 F, the lifetime of propellant is 0.62 years, or 226 days. Double based propellants have nitroglycerine, nitrocellulose, stabilizer, herbs and spices, and its rule of thumb lifetime is 20 years at 68 F. So its life time stored at 195 F would be 113 days. And so, this is the basis for all those warning about keeping gunpowder cool. Nitroglycerine attacks nitrocellulose, breaking down the double bonded NO molecules, and in fact, so does any ionic compound, such as rust. Water is polar covalent, and acts ionic, and so that is basis for all those warnings about keeping gunpowder dry.

The lifetime rule of thumb is of course more often wrong than right. Sort of human life expectancy, rule of thumb is that Americans have a seventy year plus life expectancy, but in my experience, from my memory, there were a few that did not make it out of their teen aged years, a few more their twenties, I was personally surprised by the number who did not make out of their forties, almost all of the old time Engineers who walked around with a coffee cup in one hand and a cigarette in the other died in their 50's. Many more tumbled in their 60's. Humans tumble like bowling pins in their 70's, and the very few 80 year people I met, it did not take much to make them topple. A neighbor was a WW2 veteran, he made it into his nineties. I can't remember many ninety year people whom I met, they are very rare.

Army Not Producing Enough Ammunition

http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/archive/2003/May/Pages/Army_Not3866.aspx

Regardless of what the Army decides to do with its industrial base, the fundamental issue does not change: the Army needs to produce more war reserve ammunition, Naughton said. Time is running out, he said. “Most of the ammunition in the stockpile today was built 20 years ago during the Cold War buildup.” Most rounds are designed to have a shelf life of 20 years. “We are outside the envelope of the shelf life on 40 percent or more of our existing ammunition. The rest is rapidly approaching the end of its shelf life.”

Ammunition does not “go bad” overnight, after it reaches a certain age, but “once it’s over 20 years old, the reliability rapidly degrades,” said Naughton. Within a few years, it will become increasingly difficult to shoot it. “You can predict that you’ll lose 7-8 percent of the ammo after the 20-year mark.”*

To replace the obsolete rounds, the Army would have to produce 100,000 tons of war reserve ammunition a year for the next seven years. Past that point, it would need 50,000 tons to 60,000 tons a year to sustain the stockpile. That represents about “half the level of the Cold War buildup,” he said.

* I think what is meant, 7-8 percent per year after 20 years


I recommend, shoot your ammunition up, shoot up the oldest first. Save the brass. I have lost thousands of cases because I loaded the stuff up when I did not know about gunpowder stability. Sure I have shot thousands of military surplus rounds, some that date before WW2. I also had pressure problems, but I did not know why. I just assumed poor manufacturing quality control, it never occurred to me that it was due to deteriorating gunpowder. For one, I had been taught by the for profit, in print press, that gunpowder and ammunition lasts forever, and if it fails due to age, it fails benignly. It took lots of self learning to come to the conclusion that the guys we read in the for profit, in print press, have little formal education , little expertise beyond shilling. How many of them graduated from MIT, Stanford, teach chemistry, physics, mechanical engineering or anything technical or physical sciences? The very best are Journalism majors. They are obviously picked because they are cheap, but push product well. Beyond that, they don't need to know much. All of them represent industry's interests first and foremost, or they don't get in print.

 

[Gun Geezer]

I date my ammo boxes with purchase dates and always shoot up the oldest first. But I'm in a bit of pickle with some of it. I don't shoot THAT much. Might need to work on that!

 

[Enfielder]

I got a lotta .300 Savage to burn up. And 30-30. And 9mm and 357 and .45Acp and
I’ll give myself 5 years.

 

[Enfielder]

Lets talk about Agnotology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnotology the study of culturally induced ignorance or doubt. In short, why don't you know, what you don't know?

I think the ignorance about gunpowder and thus, ammunition lifetime, is primarily due to two factors: Firstly there is no profit educating shooters that their ammunition/gunpowder has a finite (though unpredictable) lifetime. In an economic system based on consumption, there is no profit to be made educating people on what not to buy. Secondly, no one wants to hear it. Humans have an infinite capacity for self deceit and shooters firmly believe that they are going to live forever, and therefore, so must their hoard of ammunition. Both of these beliefs are quite false. At some time in the future, both you and your ammunition are going to be dust, but you really, really, don't believe this. The human mind only sees what it wants to see, so most reading this, will ignore this because it conflicts with their belief systems.

What the OP has not mentioned is the age of his ammunition. Ammunition is loaded with gunpowder, a high energy compound, which from the day it leaves the factory, is breaking down to a low energy compound. As I previously wrote, the lifetime of gunpowder is unpredictable, ammunition companies will only warrant their stuff for ten years, and ammunition near 20 years old is getting long in the tooth. Heat incidentally, is the primary enemy of gunpowder. Deterioration of gunpowder follows an exponential function when exposed to heat. That is, the hotter it is, the faster it breaks down.

View attachment 813226

Now I have heard all those people shooting 100 year old ammunition, and I will say, shoot enough of that stuff, and you will blow up whatever firearm you are shooting it in, but I do not want to spend time on this unfortunate and undesirable aspect of old gunpowder.

View attachment 813227

As gunpowder breaks down, it releases NOx,. NOx is a spectrum of nitrogen oxides, I think all of which are highly oxidizing, nitrogen dioxide is particularly irritating, (that's the red stuff in the picture) and if your gunpowder is outgassing NO2, get the stuff out of the house before it autocombusts. But I do not want to spend time on this unfortunate and undesirable aspect of old gunpowder.

View attachment 813228

View attachment 813243

What I will address is that NOx, particularly the NO2, that is released from old, deteriorating gunpowder, will attack brass.

These are my cases, all cases ruined by old gunpowder.

View attachment 813229

View attachment 813230



Someone else's brass:

View attachment 813231

View attachment 813232

View attachment 813233

View attachment 813234

View attachment 813235

Gunpowder deteriorating in the can

View attachment 813236



The lifetime of gunpowder is so unpredictable that first world militaries spend lots of money paying ammunition technicians to monitor and inspect their munitions stockpiles, and toss out the stuff that is just on the cusp of going bad. This is either a 1968 or 1969 chart, don't remember exactly.

View attachment 813237


Second and third world countries are so financially broke that they can't afford surveillance programs and so they allow their old ammunition to age to the point that their Munitions Depots have this unfortunate habit of exploding. The frequency is about one a month, somewhere in the world. Big badda boom!



As I wrote earlier, the OP did not state how old his ammunition was. So, I am going to make a jump of faith and say, the OP's ammunition is old. Old enough for the gunpowder to be breaking down, outgassing NOx, and the case neck's are cracking. Is this dangerous? Could be. We are in the realm of trying to estimate how dangerous is it to fly in a plane with a turbo fan jet engine that has cracks in the blades. That's not an easy answer. There are known examples of airplane crashes when turbo fan engines came apart, and before the planes flew, it was known there were cracks in the blades. I was told that every flight, after the first flight, of a space shuttle, there were cracks in the turbo pump fan blades. Luckily, for the turbo pump engineers, the two Space Shuttles that did blow up, did not fail due to cracked turbo pump fan blades. The astronauts died because of other known problems.

When gunpowder is deteriorated it experiences burn rate instability. A fancy set of words, but, old ammunition burns "funny". Not funny "Haw, Haw", but unpredictably. That is never good, and as gunpowder ages, so do combustion pressures. Lots of guns have blown up due to old gunpowder, but the owners, don't know why. Back to Angnotology again. Why don't you know, what you don't know?. The most likely outcome of the OP shooting his old ammunition is that every case experiences a brass crack somewhere. I predict that some of his cases will show high pressure indications. If he is lucky, he won't have a case head failure. Maybe you can see, some of my 223 Remington brass split in the exposed case head, venting gas inside the mechanism. Nothing bad happened, but it could.

I don't always follow my own advice, and someday I will suffer the consequences, but I will recommend, that if factory ammunition is regularly splitting case necks, that the owner of that ammunition stop shooting the stuff. The safest thing to do is pull the bullets, save the bullets, dump the powder out on the lawn, and throw the brass away. The brass is ruined, the gunpowder is ruined, but bullets can be used.

Is there a way this reply can be pinned or copied by an admin on a different part of the forum? I really think it's post of the month kind of stuff and super important for most of us here who reload.

 

[ATLDave]

Slamfire, not only did you present a wealth of information (I recall that you have shared much of this before), but you also wrote it beautifully. I got a kick out of the apophasis about other unpleasant aspects of gunpowder that you don't want to dwell on (but do a fine job of presenting). Cicero himself would have been impressed. Truly, it was a joy to read.

 

[FL-NC]

There's either a problem in your chamber (unlikely, since its nearly a new gun and this hasn't happened before with other ammo) or there is a QC issue at "big green". Also considering that I am sure the overwhelming majority of 30-30 ammo goes through Winchesters and Marlins of various vintages, with a minority of it going through guns like T/C contenders, NEF rifles, and the like, there shouldn't be any "hot" factory 30-30 rounds out there (at least this makes sense to me).

 

[243winxb]

Hornady had a powder storage problem back in 2016. See photos. https://nebraska.tv/archive/gi-street-closed-following-possible-explosion

I had my own IMR4895 go bad.

 

[Scooter22]

Great post by Slamfire. (your primers may be high) But I have 5 30-30s. 2 Marlins, 2 Winchesters and 1 Stevens BA. Never had a case crack in 40 years. Factory or reloads. Check your ammo.

 

[Slamfire]

Check your ammo.

And, sniff your gunpowder. Pop that seal and take a whiff, if the smell is abhorrent, or you involuntary jump across the room with a nose full of nitric acid gas, (you have no idea how bad nitric acid gas is till you sniff it!), pour the stuff out before it burns your house down!!



I poured this stuff out. At some level, I don't trust it and I know it will cause problems. No need to tempt fate: