The strange habits of ejected brass

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yhtomit

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Perhaps there is an easy to grasp reason for this, but I find (selection bias at work? Who knows?) that from all of my 9mm and 45 cal autoloaders, the brass tends to eject in a fairly tight cluster (so long as I maintain position) with a single outlier, usually the first cartridge case, at a considerably longer distance.

I have not measured this scientifically -- maybe I'm imagining things. But now that I'm collecting my own brass regularly, I've become a lot more aware of how far the brass is ejected typically from each of my pistols.

Am I wrong about this being the case? Has anyone else noticed similar? Any three points can be fit to the curve of *some* circle, I know, and perhaps I only notice the situation I think exists. I also think I've noticed the same w/ people firing on my left on a public range -- their first shot sees to clear me, usually, leaving the rest of the magazines for cheek-burning duty.

Perhaps one day I can take a bunch of old sheets and some markers to fully investigate this important branch of amateur ballistics ;)

timothy
 
If you have a problem with..

the shooter on your left peppering you with brass, buy a CZ52 and shoot on his left.......chris3
 
All I know is in a tight range booth (like the ones where I now shoot), nicely warmed steel 7.62x29 cases keep pinging off the walls and landing on my head. I'm just glad I've been lax getting the thatch buzzed lately, or I'd probably have some scorch marks :)
 
My P-1 used to eject its 9mm brass pretty much straight back. When one casing went between my eyeball and the lens of my glasses I started wearing a wide brim hat. After that, on average my hat caught 6 out 8 ejected shells each magazine.
 
With my USP Tactical 45 the brass ejects, bounces off the wall and often hits the gun again. A friend at the range said he once had a casing bounce off the wall and land on his USP 45.
 
I had a Dan Wesson Razorback bounce off the wall and get stuck in the slide before it returned to battery. Freaky, but it only happened once.:scrutiny:
 
I've noticed the last empty to leave my G19, to fall dirrectly behind me, where all the others land in a nice pile to my right. The worst gun I've ever shot, due to the stamped steel, loose ejector, was my Kel-tec P11. No pattern what-so-ever:D
 
yhtomit: The explanation I've heard for why there's usually one "outlier" is that the first round, loaded by manually releasing the slide, is not seated in the chamber as hard as subsequent rounds loaded by the cycling of the gun as it's fired. That's also why, if you and the gun are accurate enough, you may notice one round of a group that's a flier.
 
My wife and I were shooting a couple of weeks ago and I was shooting my P3AT. It has always ejected the brass very eratic. This particular day the wife was sitting on the tailgate of the truck loading up her magazines and a piece of brass from my .380 ejected straight over my head and back about 25 feet and went right down the front of her tank top. She looked like a kid trying to get a bee out of her shirt.
 
Ejection 'patterns' are influenced by several factors. The shape and tension of the extractor, the shape and length of the ejector, the ejection port sometimes, the strength of the recoil spring, the intensity of the load in the cartridge and the grip of the shooter.

With a particular wadcutter 45 I have, when I'm shooting it right, the cases all go slightly forward. The last case shot does not, because the slide locks back and doesn't fling the case forward on the closing stroke.

The U. S. rifle, M14 normally throws brass forward; the shoulder of the operating rod hits the ejected brass while closing. I have an M1 carbine. While developing a load for it, I found the lightest loads were ejected forward, with progressively heavier loads angling farther and farther back; the full charge load ejects directly over my head.

The physics of getting all those factors 'coordinated' is complicated. Good luck to anyone who can build a computer model or formulae to determine the angle and distance of ejected cases with any precision.
 
My only real brass story parallels New Geezer's pretty much. Only difference is that it happened while I was RO'ing at a cowboy shoot. Guy shooting black powder .44-40 in his rifle, ejected one at about the same time I rocked my hat back a little. That HOT HOT HOT case got between my glasses and eyeball. Damn near burnt my eye from out its socket. Had blisters on my eyelid and upper cheek for a month.

~~~Mat
 
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