Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Competitive Shooting Lake City Brass Failure Question

Was shooting one of my target rifles this evening & had a case failure. The odd thing is that the case split in the extractor groove , this is not a longitudinal split , this is also not a typical case head separation. This is a circumferential split in what SHOULD be solid case head. Has anyone seen this happen ? This is 2006 manufacture Lake City brass.


Mike

Wow... that does sound like a strange one; not one I've seen or heard of before. Any chance of pics for reference, etc.?

Monte

I saw appx the same probably 15 years ago on a piece of WW brass.

Just a flaw in a piece of brass more than likely, that one in a million kind of thing.

Not a very good picture but here it is ;





Mike

Yep thats amost exactly what I saw years ago.

IIRC I heard of another over the years, but IIRC I was thinking issue ammo to a military team shooter, most likely FC in that instance.

I'm just lucky I guess



Mike

I sectioned the case & this is what I found ;









Mike

flaw in the brass cup they drew it down from I'd say. Buy some lotto tickets... grins...

Much as I would like to think that is just a 1 in a million anomaly I no longer trust that batch of ammo. I have about 200-250 rounds that I'm gonna pull the bullets from & scrap the brass.


Mike

If I really needed 223 brass I'd take your scrap in a heartbeat... THats how much I'd trust it personally to be a singular flaw.

First ever Zeiss scope I bought was faulty....

It is 308 , not that it matters.

One thing that I neglected to mention in my earlier posts is the fact that this is remanufactured ammo. Could this be hydrodrogen embrittlement from an ammonia based cleaner in the remanufacturers brass cleaning process ?

Another very experienced person has suggested that if it were a brass flaw then why didn't it let go the first time it was fired ?

Mike

Dunno how I missed the 308 part...

Anyway, yes IMHO if the cleaners used had ammonia, it could make the brass brittle. BUT IMHO there are other weaker spots than where that turned loose. IE it should rear its head in the neck/shoulder area first if the complete cases were brittle, not down where it did.

As to not letting go on the first firing, the strength of the area in the web basically were it let go, is so strong I could easily see that the first one weakened etc and the 2nd or 3rd or whatever allowed it to let go. Minor crack first... major one second if that makes sense.

Its exactly how I end up with neck splits... and thats from worn out and brittle brass... they don't split the first time, more like the 15th time...

Now that you say 308... PM me if you want to get rid of it. I never do have enough LC 762 brass around

PM at you


Mike

i see no sign of pressure so it has to be a brass flaw

I saw a number of failures like this in issued M118 LR ammo, we had a bad lot or sublot.

Because he didn't mention caliber and scale is hard to tell from the pics and everyone is fixated on 5.56mm nowadays and ...:)

had the exact same thing happen in some LC 5.56 brass several years ago. extractor groove blow out that wiped out the extractor in my rem 700. thought it was a fluke until another blew in my nephews 700, also taking out the extractor. scrapped the whole lot,definitely not a 1 in a million occurence.