Bob,
No, it is still a mystery. I thought about those Federal cases and wondered if I had any more of them. A couple of days ago I searched through a carton of once-fired factory cases still in their original boxes.
Sure enough, I found another box of empty Federal 30-30 cases from the very same lot bought at the same time, that I had never gotten around to reloading.
I opened the box to inspect the cases, anticipating some corrosion. There was none at all. The cases appeared as clean and normal as if they had been fired this week.
So, the mystery remains. The same Federal cases, never reloaded look normal. The remaining old 150 gr. R-P bullets on my shelf look normal. The same lot of powder in the Win. 250 Sav. cases that were loaded at the same time in 1999 looked fine when I pulled a bullet, and fired normally at the range.
If something unique happened to these cases when I loaded them, I can't imagine what it would have been. In the hundreds of lots of cases I have loaded in my career beginning 50 years ago this is the only lot of cases that has ever done anything like this.
Denton suggested that maybe there was moisture or condensation in the cases when I loaded them. That seems like the likeliest cause, but I don't know how it would have happened. They were loaded in the summer when the temperatures are warm and our climate is very dry.
Denton wondered if I was blowing into the cases to remove dust or something before pouring in the powder and seating the bullet. I don't recall ever doing that, and it is not my habit, but perhaps I did. I don't have a better explanation at this time. Thanks for asking.
Last edited by nifty-two-fifty; 10/31/16.
