Thread: All good things come to an end.

Greetings all,
I went on one of my gentlemans hours week day wanders last week and actually took a rifle. It was my old Remington 700 308 bought new about 1977. Anyway I loaded the mag as I left the road end and had an enjoyable but uneventful wander. Back at the road end I popped the floorplate and into my hand rolled a projectile followed by this.

Thinking about it this rifle had not been to the bush since about 2011 when my Tikka 6.5 x 55 forced its way into the rifle cupboard. On the range I single load and this cartridge was loaded in late 2004. I may have been a little ham fisted loading an internal mag as well. Looking at my notes the case had been loaded 6 times an not annealled. It is quite possible, even likely that it came in one of the two boxes of CAC 180 grain cartridges tossed into the deal by the salesman in the late 70's. Less likely it may have been invloved in one of my meagre hunting successes. Anyway it is now an ex case. Not clear on the picture the crack goes hallf way around the case as well so it is well and truly munted.
The lesson to me is not to take antique cartridges hunting so some new ones need to be selected for the next trip.
Out of interest the load was a CAC case, Winchester W120 primer, 150 grain Norma semi pointed projectile and 46 grains of Dupont (yes Dupont) IMR4064. They chronographed around 2,800 fps from the then 560mm barrel. The case will remain in my interesting brass collection.
Regards Grandpamac.

i still have a bunch of CAC cases I have loaded for my .308. they are from the 1980's. i should probably anneal them you reckon, i dont want them to become interesting

Well and truly past its use by date lol.

I have hundreds of 308 CAC-cases here

Cleaned annealed and sized but have no intention of using them

Safety first

Greetings,
Yes I started annealing consistantly a cople of years back. I mostly use the older cases for less critical purposes keeping the new ones for the field. One thing that is important is to check the cases for incipient head separations due to over sizing. You can do this with a bent paper clip as previously described.
Regards Grandpamac.

FFS how many of you are still using .303Brit milserp ammo????
yip GPM has had a dud one,heck we get that from time to time with once fired NEW factory loads...
today I loaded up another 50x.223remington loads using milserp 5.56 brass Ive had sitting under bench for 25 years...its still once fired brass.
to be sure if its corroded ,cracked,manky chuck it out,but good brass is good brass,there are fellas on this forum using brass much much older than this,look after it,dont push load limits to edge of envelope and it should last for many loads yet.
if anything the photo is a wake up call to us all to check brass BEFORE reloading it...as per manual instructions.... its the one really good thing about cleaning brass,makes it obvious if fault like that is there.

Originally Posted by Micky Duck

FFS how many of you are still using .303Brit milserp ammo????
yip GPM has had a dud one,heck we get that from time to time with once fired NEW factory loads...
today I loaded up another 50x.223remington loads using milserp 5.56 brass Ive had sitting under bench for 25 years...its still once fired brass.
to be sure if its corroded ,cracked,manky chuck it out,but good brass is good brass,there are fellas on this forum using brass much much older than this,look after it,dont push load limits to edge of envelope and it should last for many loads yet.
if anything the photo is a wake up call to us all to check brass BEFORE reloading it...as per manual instructions.... its the one really good thing about cleaning brass,makes it obvious if fault like that is there.

Greetings Micky,
Amoung my other .303 cases there are 12 Canadian made cases headstamped 1942. They are boxer primed and have been annealed. Most were once fired and some were new. The new ones had their primers fired in my other .303 which then had its barrel boiled out. They have now been loaded with a light load and 174 grain rpond nose projectiles for my 1942 Longbranch cut down .303. This rifle has an absolutely mint barrel, is scoped and is very accurate. To me there is something elegant about using cases and a rifle made half a world away almost 80 years ago for hunting. There are a lot of military .223 and .308 cases in my boxes that were manufactured in the late 1970's and 1980's that are still used to this day. Even some Berdan primed cases that have been decapped ready for priming with Berdan primers which I have. I must get around to doing that.
Regards Grandpamac.

pleased I didnt offend ol chap...... yeah old brass is still fine,we ALL sometimes get a tad slack on the inspection bit...Ive got awesome dentists tool for checking insode of cases with neck bigger than .224..... and because Ive had this milserp stuff ,it would be lucky if any of my .223 cases have seen more than half dozen loads at worst.

Originally Posted by Micky Duck

pleased I didnt offend ol chap...... yeah old brass is still fine,we ALL sometimes get a tad slack on the inspection bit...Ive got awesome dentists tool for checking insode of cases with neck bigger than .224..... and because Ive had this milserp stuff ,it would be lucky if any of my .223 cases have seen more than half dozen loads at worst.

Greetings again Micky,
I see no reason why my No4 with my handloads in those DI 1942 cases can not be taken hunting on the 100th aniversery of their manufacture. Probably not by me though.
Regards Grandpamac.

Originally Posted by 7mmwsm

So is there an issue with CAC brass?
I have a heap of it in 308 and have been using it. It seems to be consistent weight and doesn't appear to fail any worse than any other brands.
It is quite handy when you have a number of rifles in the same caliber to run different brands of brass in each one.

Greetings,
Some of the late batchs of .308 that I have were significantly heavier than the early batches and I had problems with neck cracks in some .303 cases about 1970. Other than that I have had good life. The necks need to be annealed to stop neck splits and excessive sizing will result in head separations but this applies to all cases. Lee Enfield rifles are noted for head separations with most brands of cases but decent life can be achieved if loads are kept down and neck sized or minimally full length sized. I use the different head stamps to keep track of the cases as well, both in different rifles and the same one to keep batches seperate.
Regards Grandpamac.

Originally Posted by JohnDuxbury

i still have a bunch of CAC cases I have loaded for my .308. they are from the 1980's. i should probably anneal them you reckon, i dont want them to become interesting

I would. Pull em (keep the heads and re-seat later), anneal and ditch old powder. I would fire off the primers too. I'd be pretty chuffed to be running antique brass as long as the neck wall thickness was all still good (above .012").
Just annealing shows me any differences that you might miss with the ball mic (unless you're literally checking EVERYTHING). Its like a WOF for the brass

Originally Posted by T.FOYE

I would. Pull em (keep the heads and re-seat later), anneal and ditch old powder. I would fire off the primers too. I'd be pretty chuffed to be running antique brass as long as the neck wall thickness was all still good (above .012").
Just annealing shows me any differences that you might miss with the ball mic (unless you're literally checking EVERYTHING). Its like a WOF for the brass

Good points. The original powder usrd in .303 and .308 loads was likely AR2201. This has a rather short shelf life especially if it is stored in hot conditions. In some old .303 CAC loads I have broken down the powder had clumped and needed digging out plus there was corrosion on the inside of the case and the base of the projectile. Some of the primers were dead as well.
Regards Grandpamac.

I only saw this today. Its kinda relevant because its old ammo and in this guys case (unknown origin). Watching this is scarey. Made me look over my own methods and im finally gonna use shooting glasses no matter how annoying they are over my prescription glasses. Thats my sin. But this fella suffered all these injuries and still didnt realise his error was to shoot old unknown ammo. I know he's not a reloader but oh lordy if you're shooting 50cal find a reloader and get the loads verified! As i said, this one is scarey.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=1449kJKxlMQ

One of my early rifle reloading adventures was 303 with cast bullets using older CAC once fired brass. Like from the 1950s or thereabouts. I was proceeding very gingerly with only book learning for guidance. I loaded 12 and put them aside. 3 days later, 8 of the rounds necks had split. That's when i went and learned about annealing brass. Did that and no issues. Reloaded those first case 5 times with cast doing load development. Still have them..

Originally Posted by Jhon

One of my early rifle reloading adventures was 303 with cast bullets using older CAC once fired brass. Like from the 1950s or thereabouts. I was proceeding very gingerly with only book learning for guidance. I loaded 12 and put them aside. 3 days later, 8 of the rounds necks had split. That's when i went and learned about annealing brass. Did that and no issues. Reloaded those first case 5 times with cast doing load development. Still have them..

Greetings @Jhon,
I had much the same experience but with jacketed projectiles. Your cases were likely late 60's or later vintage. Early sporting CAC cases were Berdan primed with non corrosive primers. These were the first sporting rounds I bought and only realised I couldn't reload them after I started hand loading in the early 70's.
Regards Grandpamac.