Thread: What would have this felt like?

Was at the range this morning and picked up this piece of brass. By the looks of it catastrophic case failure, case bulge, with flattened and pierced primer.






Not having had this happen, I'm curious as to what the shooter would have felt when the shot went off? Would this have likely have been noticeable in terms of increased noise or change in felt recoil?

oh shit yes.......he would have felt that one alright..and heard it..and possibly got face full of grit....

I wouldn't like to be his/her laundry maid.

I'm curious, is the most likely cause to hot a load (primer as exhibit A) or is this just a case of the brass past it's useful life?

Looks like a typical case head seperation from ecxessive headspace and / or to much resizeing. Thats the one you can feel with a unfolded paper clip down the inside of the case.
If you look at the case wall you can see that its not a clean cut but goes up on a bevel as the case kept being reworked.
Just my opinion It could be totally wrong.

Looks like older brass compared to a more recent one....



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its not that old..there is not RE on it to say its ok for reloading (or am I really showing my age now?) one thing for sure,its poked now.sure hope the person on trigger is ok.

Im picking he would of let a bit of wees go.

Hope it was in a modern action

If there were no human body parts on the ground, or blood, chances are the shooter survived - I would guess ! Also hope the rifle had a modern action as these are remarkably strong against mishaps like this.
From personal experience, yes, it would have been noticeable. Maybe not so much in recoil but a different sounding report and perhaps a bit of smokey gas ejected. Would have known for sure when only the back portion of the case ejected. Hope the remaining case wasn't stuck too hard to the chamber wall.
Almost certainly a reloaded cartridge. Pierced primer suggests excessive charge weight or inappropriate powder to me.

I witnessed that happen to a guy on the range.
I suspect from overworked brass as it happened three times in a ten round shoot.
It wasn't really noticeable until he opened the bolt and the heads came out on their own.
Needless to say, I found something to do elsewhere until he had finished shooting.

Wow. So thats what a properly flattened primer looks like.

I saw...well... i was there when a Husqvarna let go on the range less than 2 years ago, blowing the action apart and launching the bolt (thankfully upwards, not backwards, user did not suffer significant damage). Would be curious to see what the cause of this overpressure was in the this case. Suspect the one i was there for was this: https://castboolits.gunloads.com/sho...rophic-Failure

Had old brass do that some years back. Luckily it was a very mild load, Son was shooting and he did not notice until he could not feed the next round.
Was very old brass of my Dad's, some of it had been worked hard and a touch hot.
Did the bent paper clip in some other brass when I got home and dumped the lot. Spured me to go and buy new brass.
Cheap stuff for the lever and Lapua for the bot action.
Z

I cannot say anything about the flattening, but I have also had 6.5x55 cases do this. With my ones it was a relatively 'normal' load with 42gr powder so not a hot load. With mine, it was only noticed when I extracted the fired round and only that part of the case come out of the rifle. The front bit stayed in the chamber. It flicked out easy enough with a nail we found so we suspect the brass I was using was towards the end of its usefulness. I will say, mine was not Norma- it was Sellior and bellot and had only been reloaded the once.

I suspect there is two factors at play in the above exmple. The load was hot which flattened the primer AND the case was at the end of its life with the spearation. (Hot loads would accelerate this..) If it ws like mine, the load would have made no difference and the separation would have occurred anyway even with a lighter load. I now check all my brass fo this but having loaded a number of calibres, the 6.5x55 is the only one that has ever done this...

NOTE Above was not me - unfortunately I made the error in jdugment and sold my 6.5x55 some years ago .......

That's not just a simple case separation- the base of the case shows classic signs of big pressure. The primer has NO radius left and is pierced. There is a very clear ejector imprint as well. I DEF wouldn't have wanted to fire that round.