Thread: Something I'd Not Seen Before

Greetings All,
I've just been out in the shed prepping some .223 cases for a batch of handloads and I spotted this. A body crack. The case is a R-P case that has been fired 5 times and has never been full length resized. It was fired 4 times in my Rem VSSF until I experienced some neck cracks. The survivors were neck annealed and loaded for my T3 which has a slightly larger chamber so did not need FL sizing. The case neck is still fine. In almost 50 years of handloading this is the first body crack I have encountered. All the other cases seem to be fine.
Being a hands on type of chap I do all my initial case prep including inspection, depriming, cleaning etc using hand tools as I think this gives me time to pick up any faults. To be honest I was not looking for body cracks but managed to spot it any way. Must be the new reading spec's.
Regards Grandpamac.

There are some other very odd marks on that case as well.

It work hardened into the old chamber size via 5 firings

Then you made it expand into a slightly bigger chamber, - it wasn’t used to that

Originally Posted by Woody

There are some other very odd marks on that case as well.

I think most of them are reflections of the holes in the loading block. The neck and shoulder get a scrub with steel wool so I can see any minor neck cracks easier. There is a slight blue smudge at the forward end of the crack. The photo was just taken with my cell phone, will get out the camera later.
Regards GPM.

Originally Posted by grandpamac

In almost 50 years of handloading this is the first body crack I have encountered.
All the other cases seem to be fine.
Regards Grandpamac.

Reassuring. Maybe, now I won't make that broken case extractor.

Originally Posted by Woody

There are some other very odd marks on that case as well.

think you will find they are reflections of the holes in board...

Had 1 in my 270 case the other day however had a factory 223 round split a case on firing was a little nasty

Greetings All,
The cartridge case body crack has intrigued me. Inserted a couple of words here to stop any old duffers getting over excited. 7mmsaum has suggested work hardening as a likely cause but was not convinced so measured the case body for a case after firing in the VSSF and after firing in the T3. It is easy to get these measurements badly wrong as you are measuring on a tapered surface so I used the Lee de capping base as a guide. Drop the case in the base and lay the jaws of the dial Vernier on top of the base. The case from the VSSF measured 9.5 mm pretty much on the nose and the T3 case about 9.51 or 9.52 mm, that's less than 0.001 inch larger. The T3 chamber is barely larger in dia but is likely a little longer in head space.
None of the other 50 odd cases shows any problem which leads me to believe that the predominant cause was a isolated manufacturing fault. The reason is survived 4 firings was that it was never FL sized. Cracks such as this often show up on the first or subsequent firing from what I have read. Perhaps I should dip into Julian Hatchers Notebook to se what he has to say.
Regards Grandpamac.

Im with Mauser308 on this one. I expect it to be a flaw in tjd material the case was formed from

R-P brass is shocking for splitting based on my own observations and experience.

In saying that I’ve only seen it split in the neck.

I do a bit of reloading for mates and I’ve made them all go out and spend some money on decent brass to avoid issues like this.

I had 22-250 cases split at neck on first firing from factory ammunition.....bit on the nose when bought it for the brass...other 19 were fine.