After 3 firings of Nosler brass (6.5 creedmoor), I had 2 cases out of about 80 that has a crack right at the junction of the neck and shoulder going around the case about 1/4 of the way. Any ideas of what would cause that?
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View thread Contact supportI bought the brass new, brother loaded 3 times and I fired 3 times in a Tikka CTR. I then was preparing to anneal it and noticed the cracks. I haven't fired it for a forth time (got busy with work and bow hunting) so I don't know if there will be more failures at this point.Weird. Could it just be a defective batch of brass or perhaps brass that may have been over-annealed at some point?
Few quick questions:
- Was failed Nosler brass brand new brass with three firings or was it Nosler brass of prior unknown history that was reloaded three times by your brother prior to failure?
- You mentioned annealing after third firing. Is it correct to assume the annealing was done after experiencing the above failures?
- If #2 above is true, have you experienced any additional failures on the fourth firing?
I'm curious, normally you don't start 'bumping' back the shoulder until you've fired the cases enough times to fully expand them. For my .308, that was on the fifth firing. The first hand load should always be done with a full length die to make sure everything is straight. Subsequent reloads neck sized only, until the cases are fully expanded and you can feel it when closing the bolt. After which the shoulder bump operation is done each reload. During every reload, working up to the bumping, be sure to check case length and trim if necessary. The brass has a tendency to stretch/grow lengthwise most during the early part of the process. That case length can be critical and cause problems. If the case mouth starts to contact the end of the chamber. It will give a false feel that the shoulder is tight and cause excess pressure because the case mouth can't properly release the grip of the bullet. Additionally, if bumping the shoulder back repeatedly because the cartridge was too long, you absolutely end up with the kind of early case failures you've described.
Take some pics of a couple loaded rds in the same area. I may be on a fishing expedition.
Thanks for taking the pics, I was thinking your die may have a ridge right at the shoulder-neck area where a chunk of the reamer that was used had broken off, not it. But by the pics, it looks like there is a line just below the shoulder-body junction? The left case, could be pic, looks rounded too. Are the shoulder angles the same from sized to fired?Please see the requested pictures of both sides of a few rounds. These have been loaded 3 times (not fired the 3rd time). View attachment 6951418View attachment 6951419
I don't know a lot about it (my brother loads for me) but I know I bought a Redding die set for him to use on them since he didn't have any 6.5 dies.Is this a bushing die?
I hear what you're saying but I have 512 rounds through it and had 0 issues until the last 20 rounds. If it was the rifle why would it show up now?I would post this on the Gunsmith section. This is very worrisome to me and wouldn't shoot this rifle again until I had a Smith look at it.
I hear what you're saying but I have 512 rounds through it and had 0 issues until the last 20 rounds. If it was the rifle why would it show up now?
Couple of things still not clear. Let me see if I understand... please confirm if following assumptions are true?
1. You had no issues with prior firings with other brass or factory loads.
2. You bought new brass which your brother reloaded and first firing went okay.
3. Your brother continued making your reloads and bumped back shoulders another couple of times and you started seeing some issues with cracking.
4. You annealed following third firing and brass was then sized and reloaded a fourth time prior to firing to total failure.
If above is correct, then your brass, perhaps was of dubious quality from the beginning and it’s condition may have been exacerbated by excessive bump back during reloading by your brother. Annealing to too hot a temperature could also go a long way towards wrecking your brass.
Good luck! Be very careful.
1) correct
2) Correct. Firings 1-2 went fine. Issues showed up only upon the 3rd firing.
3) Correct
4) Not correct- The brass failed on the 3rd firing. I did not anneal before the failure.
No- All failures were on the 3rd firing (All before I annealed). Given the failures on 3rd firing, I have not reloaded them a 4th time.But after the third firing you annealed and then the fourth firing resulted in having the multiple neck separations?
If so, I would concur and suggest you throw the rest of that brass out and confirm you are only bumping shoulders back the couple of thousands of an inch you think you are when resizing. Lastly, make sure you are not cooking (overheating) your brass when annealing.
Thanks for your thoughts- The brass was bought new from a reputable company so I'm certain that it only has 3 firings on it. I have sent an email to Nosler so it will be interesting to see what they say about it on Monday or Tuesday or Friday......Just another dumb-ass opinion but ... there is something weird here. I have been doing some sort of precision handloading for about 25 years and in all that time, I have shot off exactly one neck. It was 300 win mag with many-times-fired brass. You sent a picture of five pieces where you shot the neck off. I confess that I shoot brass until the primer pockets are too big or until I get incipient or partial head separations. Yes, I am a bad person for wearing out my brass but I do not get what you are getting. Either the brass itself is different or you are using a different process to convert fired brass into ammunition.
Button dies: when inserting the brass into the die, there is a force pushing the neck straight down into the case, simultaneously a force squeezing the neck to a smaller diameter and later a force pushing the shoulder toward the base of the case. The force squeezing the neck stops above the junction where your separations occur. The only force that might overstress that specific place is the first one. Maybe you could use more lube ? There is also a force reducing the case body diameter but that is lower than your fracture and it doesn't seem to relate.
I was contemplating, is the button too small? Maybe but it seems unlikely. When I do that, the neck is visually smaller-diameter at the top and larger near the neck/shoulder junction. When seating bullets, the upper part still looks a little smaller than the lower part. The extra fat shoulder helps to center the round in the chamber when I close the bolt.
Regular full length dies: sort of the same as above except the neck squeezing happens all the way to the junction where you are having trouble. Consider more lube. If you full-length-size and bump the shoulder at all, the neck/shoulder junction is being worked by the die. If the shoulder bump was too long, that would excessively work the neck/shoulder junction and - maybe - weaken it. I don't know, just thinking about all of the bending and squeezing going on in there. Suppose the shoulder was bumped too much, typically the firing pin strike looks kind of light and sometimes there are failure-to-fire events. It seems possible that the act of firing might expand the case neck into the chamber neck, lock in place, then the pressure shoves the brass backwards toward the bolt face breaking off the neck. Kind of a cool image but that seems really unlikely to me. Instead of the case tearing the neck off, the case body should lock to the chamber midwall and the big stretch would be just above the web. That is what I usually see - incipient or partial head separations. So pushing the shoulder too far back normally has different symptoms than shooting the necks off.
So, it seems weird. Suppose bad brass. "Bad" how? Too soft? To a shooter, "soft brass" means ductile, would it not just stretch a lot? Could it be too hard? When shooters say that brass is too hard, they really mean it is too brittle - that is what we see here, it is not stretching, it is fracturing. The composition could make the brass brittle or it could be work-hardened - in your case, fired too many time and not annealed. But it has only been fired 3 times. No way in Hell will firing brass three times work-harden it enough to do this. In the posts above I didn't see, was this new brass or did you buy "once fired" from someone? If "once fired" perhaps your correspondent can't count? If it was already work-hardened or had been mistreated then ... ? Bad composition? If Nosler shipped a batch of bad stuff, you COULD be the first guy to get it but if not, then it would have made a splash here. As a community we don't suffer in silence - we bitch about stuff.
I think that there is some missing information that would explain this. I think it is brittle and it is breaking but I cannot invent an explanation for how that could happen. Anybody? Buehler?
This has been forwarded to gunsmith section and is getting good!I’m curious what your fired, sized (expander removed), expanded (expander installed), loaded diameters are.
I’m curious what your fired, sized (expander removed), expanded (expander installed), loaded diameters are.
Will need to ask my brother that as I don't know. He is out coyote hunting tonight so don't think I will get an answer any time soon.I’m curious what your fired, sized (expander removed), expanded (expander installed), loaded diameters are.
The only other scenario I'm coming up with is the possibility of multiple problems causing the neck failures.
1.) Necks turned too far into the shoulders?
2.) Tight neck tension combined with excess head space from bump back?
3.) Loads too hot?
4.) Residual sizing lube left on the cases?
5.) If gas gun, gas block problem?
Cumulative effect of the above issues might have brought this on.