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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.
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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.
Case head separation can give those head stamp indications from a standard load. With the case separated there is no retention from the chamber wall friction and the detached end of the over sized case slams into the bolt face. Without any details of the load its imposable to say if it was over pressure or not.Quote:
Originally Posted by 6x47
He wouldnt have noticed anything. The case breaking like that reduced the pressures immediately. He might have noticed a little less recoil than normal....
I have had a couple of those over the years that look exactly the same, both were not noticable in any way until you open the action and the case drops apart into two pieces. Another one the case only let go most of the way around, and I didnt even notice till I got home.
Interestingly, in each case, the bullet still made part of a fairly normal looking group...
The lesson I learned was you can watch for the ring, a bit higher than you think - not the swipe mark from sizing - up from base of your old brass, and see when you need to junk the brass.
And a case head separation is not that big a deal.
As JohnDuxbury said, no big deal. Years ago I acquired a Parker Hale rifle in 308 off one of dads mates. Came with a heap of reloaded ammo. Had a 3 case head separations while I had that rifle and 2 with same ammo in another rifle. All Norma Re brass. No visible signs on loaded cases. Case head ejected and remaining case more or less fell out of chamber each time. Checked every fired case with sharpened split pin and culled dud cases ever since. That was back in early ‘80’s. Nick Harvey wrote an article about CHS around same time so was a problem easily fixed. Interesting learning experience. Recently culled some once fired PPU brass for same reason, that surprised me.
I had that happen 2-3 times now in .30-06 and .35 W. REM 700s in days past. Old over sized brass, warm loads, a puff of smoke through the magazine and a short case on ejection and the looking the give rifle a bit of a shake to get case remains out and brass brush to check all gone. No big calamity.
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A similar event which occurred near me on the range last year, with the same calibre.
Shooter not seriously harmed, aside from being very surprised and having a piece of the primer anvil pierce his skin on the forehead. The case body remained stuck in the chamber. Bolt was found in a roofing gutter up behind the firing line.
-BW- Doesn't look like normal case head separation there. Looks like it's blown at the extractor rim. Over pressure load ? Whatever, lucky shooter not to get seriously hurt.
Dead right. Head separation from the case having the shoulder set back to far when sizing. Common with 6.6x55, 7x57 and likely others due to dies that are too short for the chamber. The heavily flattened primer is primarily due to a short case and not excess pressure.Quote:
Originally Posted by johnd
GPM.
Greetings ,
A bit more detail. The headspace dimensions of some of the rifles and dies and chambers I have encountered may be of interest. Cases FL sized in recent Redding dies move the shoulder back 0.3mm (0.012") from fired position in my and a friends. For my M38 and a friends Ruger it is 0.45mm (0.018"). With an older set of Lyman dies it is even worse at 0.4mm (0.016") and 0.55mm (0.022"). Unfired Lapua cases are a good match for my Tikka. So the problem exists in the US. Somewhere along the line US die makers started using dimensions that were too short and this was only partly corrected when the 6.5 became a SAAMI cartridge.
This means that even with the tighter T3 chamber cases sized with the die hard down on the shell holder headspace will be grossly excessive, especially with older dies. When a cartridge is fired in these chambers the firing pin fall plus the primer igniting forces the case to the front of the chamber with the primer backed out hard against the bolt face. As pressure rises the case is forced back over the primer flattening it as shown in the photos. This happens even at some start loads.
Around 60 or so years ago Julian Hatcher wrote in American Rifleman that primer appearance was practically worthless for judging pressure. Others have repeated this over the years based on their experience. I am with them on this one.
Regards Grandpamac.
To belatedly answer the question posed in the OP, a case head separation is usually no big drama. The shooter is often unaware that there is a problem until they pull the bolt back and only part of the case comes with it. On the old Roy's Hill Range many years ago one of our detail was having head separation problems with his .243. Each time it occurred he whipped out a cleaning rod and ran a patch down from the muzzle and out popped the rest of the case. That sorted it was on to the next shot. Some banter was heard about his muzzle loading Manlicher.
GPM.
Correct, it wasn’t a case head separation as evidenced by the case head being visible in the photo. It was just ‘similar’ in being a case failure, and the resultant destruction of the rifle, which is a potential outcome of case head seperation.Quote:
Originally Posted by woods223
Going on a tangent there, apologies
looks like it was close to a case of shooters head seperation from rest of his body.....pleased they werent decapitated.
Greetings,Quote:
Originally Posted by -BW-
That is a catastrophic failure. Not only is the bolt missing but the top of the receiver ring and the bridge are gone. I see also that the front of the floorplate is blown off. Massive overpressure due to overload or barrel obstruction? It would be interesting to know if it had a scope fitted.
GPM.
