Learning the importance of case inspection - again
No editing titles? Anyway,
A little while back I had a case separation in my AR-15 from using once fired military brass. I made an assumption that it being once fired was no cause for concern as I thought that these would be like other military cases I have used. The main difference being that a lot of my previous military cases were unfired from pull downs or over runs. I assumed that separations shouldn't occur until several firings.
Wrong.
Today I was sorting the brass from the range trip that the broken shell occurred on and took Walkalong's advice and ran a dental pick down the inner body of each case. Actually, the first case I picked out of the tub had a bright ring around it. That is what triggered my memory to use the pick. Well out of several hundred cases two were discarded and I cut one of those open to show what I found. It almost certainly would have separated the next firing. This will now be a permanent part of my sorting routine. All others already sorted will be done when resizing.
The photo doesn't show depth very well but the ring is pretty deep. It is easily felt with the pick.
Moral of my story: Try not to make assumptions like I did or become complacent. I knew better, but wasn't thinking about the prior history of those cases. I think this can be easy to do with time constraints, components being used months or years after purchase, etc.
No editing titles? Anyway,
A little while back I had a case separation in my AR-15 from using once fired military brass. I made an assumption that it being once fired was no cause for concern as I thought that these would be like other military cases I have used. The main difference being that a lot of my previous military cases were unfired from pull downs or over runs. I assumed that separations shouldn't occur until several firings.
Wrong.
Today I was sorting the brass from the range trip that the broken shell occurred on and took Walkalong's advice and ran a dental pick down the inner body of each case. Actually, the first case I picked out of the tub had a bright ring around it. That is what triggered my memory to use the pick. Well out of several hundred cases two were discarded and I cut one of those open to show what I found. It almost certainly would have separated the next firing. This will now be a permanent part of my sorting routine. All others already sorted will be done when resizing.
The photo doesn't show depth very well but the ring is pretty deep. It is easily felt with the pick.
Moral of my story: Try not to make assumptions like I did or become complacent. I knew better, but wasn't thinking about the prior history of those cases. I think this can be easy to do with time constraints, components being used months or years after purchase, etc.
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