Thread: Split brass

The belt is only good for a fatique riser - a point in the brass where there is a sharp transition in wall thickness. It's a hangover from the old African big game rifles where the cases did headspace on the belt as there wasn't a shoulder on the case at all. As people started using these big cases and necking them down to create the 'magnum' rounds we have today the belt remained. Only a few like the Lapua magnums got rid of the belt.

As grandpamac has noted, if the belt on the case is short and the belt recess cut in the rifle's chamber is long, there's a chunk of case wall that isn't supported. You can't fix that. It will result in a split eventually whatever you do...

The usual thing done these days when reloading the belted cases is leaving the shoulder alone until it contacts the shoulder cut in the chamber and it becomes stiff to close the bolt. Push the shoulder back just far enough to reduce the pressure on the bolt when chambering. In effect, you are making the belt irrelevant and decorative, as you are then treating the case like a normal no-belt case and headspacing on the shoulder. Neck sizing to take the next bullet can be done as a separate option - there are bushing dies like the Redding as one example, that you can get as a 'full length' bushing die. You can set the die just to the point of pushing the shoulder back so there's no pressure when chambering a reloaded round. The bushing can be changed to the right one for the neck tension you want and you don't need to run an expander ball that is hard on the case neck.

That helps brass life for the case neck splits, but won't do anything to solve the separation problem. Unfortunately that's a result of the design and the cut out in the chamber...