After reading all the horror stories about case head seperation and the dangers thereof I thought I would pass along this story.

When I first started reloading about 18 years ago I was reloading for a .270 The rifle was a Remington 700. After loading the brass for about the fourth time I took ten Rounds out to try a new load. When I ejected the second round after firing I noticed that the case had cracked around half of the circumfrence just ahead of the web. Not knowing any better and thinking that I had just lost a case to to many loadings, I fired the rest of them. Well four more of them cracked the same way. My question is this.....am I just damed lucky or does the Rem. 700 have a way to deal with this sort of case failure. I sure feel lucky!!

They could leak. That's how boats sink. One little thing after another going wrong. If you had been hunting it could have put the rifle out of commission.

The Remington is a containment design and had the case leaked back it would have done well. Maybe.

Make a feeler gage to reach inside the empties to feel for an insipiant head separtion. It gets bad on the inside before you can even see it on the outside.

Set your Fl dies right. Size the case back just enough and no more.

[ 04-28-2003, 05:36: Message edited by: Savage99 ]

The bigger problem with head separation is that the hot gases burn the chamber as they escape. Like a cutting torch. That can lead to other problems of function in the firearm involved. Usually case separations are not dangerous as most of the gases go forward anyway with whatever sealing of the chamber occurs at ignition. Better examine the chamber for cutting in the area of the separation.

I have lost a couple case heads in semi auto pistols.

1) I have a Kel-Tec P11 9x19mm.
The feed ramp intrudes .190" into the chamber, and the web of 9mm brass being .160" thick, that leaves .030" of thin unsupported brass over the feed ramp.
Increasing the powder charge ~60%, the primer pierces, the case bulges, and case blow a little hole down the feed ramps, and finally, when he case head blows:
a) pieces of brass, powder, and primer can come back through the ejector slot in the slide and hit the shooter in the face. The blood on his face is called "major face".
b) The bottom plate can blow off the magazine and the ammo in the magazine and the follower can shoot out the mag well.
c) The extractor can be sheared off, exiting at high velocity to the right.

2) I have a CZ52 7.62x25mm pistol.
The 1953 Polish case head blew off with 1% extra powder. The escaping gas blew the extractor off at high velocity to the right. The escaping gas also split the slide.

The problem (among others) with a case head separation on a rifle is that the rear portion of the brass may fail to obturate to seal off the rear of the chamber. This can allow a significant amount of pressurized gas (along with some brass particles) to escape rearward into the action. Most modern bolt action rifles handle this small amount of escaping gas without danger to the shooter, but there's always some hazard.

You were lucky to experience only "partial" separations. A complete seperation will leave your rifle inoperable due to the forward portion of the case lodged in the chamber. Such a lodged case is usually not too hard to remove, if you have the right tool.

If the separation occurs far enough ahead of the web section, so there is a bit of case wall left behind the rupture, it can obturate sufficiently to seal the gas from blowing back through the action. I've had this happen several times with a M71 in .348 caliber, which allows some case stretching every time you fire it. No gas escaped, though, because of where the separation ring was located. It left about 1" of the rear of the case head intact. This sealed the breech.

I'll bet you were shoving the shoulders back when resizing your brass, so the cases were having to stretch to fill the chamber each time you reloaded them, causing eventual separation. The M700 action will not permit head separation in fired brass as long as cases are sized properly.

I had my first head separation a few weeks ago. It was a .22-250 on a 700. The head separated approximately 1/3 the diameter of the case with the "typical" frosty ring the remaining 2/3's. There was a considerable amount of blowback with a heavily sooted head, rim, and extractor groove. Gas came back through the bolt and hit me in the right eye. Sad thing was: I took my shooting glasses off two rounds before this happened, due to an "experiment" I was trying regarding the glasses. I also had two minute blood spots on my nose. Initailly, I hadn't felt any discomfort in my left eye. The next day, it was as if it had migrated into the left eye, while continuing in the right. It took a solid week for all the discomfort and blurriness to go away.

The case showed absolutely no signs before separation.

I learned a valuable leason the hard way that day...one that I already knew, but didn't have any "first hand" experience with. "Always wear eye and ear protection." Since that occurance, I have paid attention to the lesson very carefully.

I also dumped all cases in that lot, just as a precaution, as I hadn't kept absolute certain of number of firings for those cases. I cut a few open, and only found one more that showed the barest hint of separation on the inside, but I feel better now, that they are gone. Next time, I will pay more attention to my brass, too....

On a side note: I was full length resizing. This does work the brass more and definatley contributes to this type of brass failure. I have experimented a small amount with partial sizing and full length resizing, but not enough to make a definate conclusion for this rifle, yet. I have also recently acquired a neck sizer, and will try that in time, too.

[ 04-28-2003, 21:19: Message edited by: Trapdoor ]