Shovel
Member
I went hiding from further honey-dos this afternoon and thought I'd take a look at what kind of 22-250 reloads were passed down to me. Have 4 boxes of old Norma brass loaded up with 55 gr spitzers in front of 33.5 gr of 4320 - looks ok by my old Sierra book. Also have 5 boxes of 250 Savage brass that was resized to 22-250 and these were marked varying from 45 Gr spitzers w/33.1 gr 4320 and a ladder of 55 gr spitzers running from 33.5 to 37 (!!) gr of 4320.
All the Norma cases looked like they had their necks set back hard on the shoulders - look shootable, though. If I go ahead and plink these off I can see what can be done in rehabbing the cases (annealing, resize, neck turn... the usual rainy day stuff).
What's interesting and has me wondering about the stability of the 4320 powder is that every one of 5 boxes of the resized Remington 250 Savage cases have split necks with signs of powder deterioration seeping out from cracks. One case broke in my hand when I went to clean the neck area with some steel wool.
So - pull 'em all down (Norma and Remington), get scrap value for the Rem cases and a handful of bullets, reload the Norma's with fresh powder and then go plinking? I'm leaning toward as safe as possible and will probably go this way. I do have a few hundred new Remington 22-250 cases so wouldn't be too heartbroken over losing the Norma stuff.
But - anyone ever see work-hardened brass age crack like this? Perhaps its stress-corrosion cracking from the powder....
All the Norma cases looked like they had their necks set back hard on the shoulders - look shootable, though. If I go ahead and plink these off I can see what can be done in rehabbing the cases (annealing, resize, neck turn... the usual rainy day stuff).
What's interesting and has me wondering about the stability of the 4320 powder is that every one of 5 boxes of the resized Remington 250 Savage cases have split necks with signs of powder deterioration seeping out from cracks. One case broke in my hand when I went to clean the neck area with some steel wool.
So - pull 'em all down (Norma and Remington), get scrap value for the Rem cases and a handful of bullets, reload the Norma's with fresh powder and then go plinking? I'm leaning toward as safe as possible and will probably go this way. I do have a few hundred new Remington 22-250 cases so wouldn't be too heartbroken over losing the Norma stuff.
But - anyone ever see work-hardened brass age crack like this? Perhaps its stress-corrosion cracking from the powder....