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| One of Us |
Since the brain trust around here is pretty large... I had something happen to me last night that I have never seen before. With time on my hands, I have been reloading for rifles I haven't shot in a while. I finally got around to .300 WSM. I have reloaded for this cartridge for a while, but since its not one of my more commonly hunted guns, its been kind of on the back burner of late. The cases have all been fired in only one rifle. The reloading dies are relatively new Redding dies that have been used with this rifle. I have 3 lots of cases- Federal brass cases Winchester nickel plated cases Federal Nickel plated cases. The Federal Brass and Winchester Nickel are from factory ammo. The Federal Nickel I brought from Graf and Sons as new unfired primed cases. The cases were all annealed in an AMP annealer prior to resizing.  This is what the Federal Brass and the Winchester cases looked like after resizing.  This is what the Federal Nickel cases look like after resizing. Is this something I'm doing wrong, or is it a sign of bad brass that I need to take up with Federal? I've got like 200 of these cases new and unfired minus the 10 that I used for load workup that I am showing here. Every one of this lot of cases shows some degree of splits- these are actually the better ones. I've thought that annealing would fix this problem. Guess not. Any thoughts from the gallery? | ||
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| One of Us |
If those are unfired, I would suspect it is bad brass. With that being said, I have no experience with nickel plated brass. | |||
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Contact AMP. I dont think nickel should be annealed? | |||
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243, Are those cases plated brass or solid nickel? I suspect the former. What say you? Stephen | |||
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They are all once fired. The first two (brass finish and Winchester nickel plate) came from factory ammo, the Federal Nickel plate were new cases that had been fired with a velocity series set of loads, so mostly relatively low intensity loadings, but still all had the cracks form after resizing. AMP in the manual says Nickel plated cases are fine. | |||
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| One of Us |
I cannot account for the neck splits. I do notice that the neck/shoulder junction looks different (as in the second photo's seem radiused) between the brass in the two pictures. Are you sure your sizing die is properly adjusted? I don't know how that could do it, but I'm at a loss for what looks to me like a radius on that junction. | |||
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I don't know what you got going on there but those don't look right. your shoulder lengths [where your head space would be] are all over the place. if your over sizing the cases it is common for a case to crease in on the neck shoulder junction.[where the old shoulder used to be] so either you got bad cases or your over sizing the cases. your also not champhering the case mouths which can lead to the neck sizing ball to work and stretch the case mouths all out of square like evidenced in the pictures. | |||
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| One of Us |
I think you guys are seeing things from my not so great pictures. (for instance, all the cases look the same color in the photos...) By micrometer measurement they are OK (can't check the ones with the splits really at the neck, but the shoulder is supposedly in the right spot- bumped back .004"). I don't see them out of square when measuring them, either, although they do definitely look that way in the photos... The ones with the splits do look like they are a bit rounded, and the expander is harder to pull through after annealing than usual. I tried using Imperial die lube and mica dry lube on the insides of the necks to see if it helped- nope. I even pulled the die off after I was done to see if there was anything inside that might explain it, and other than some lube, nothing. The dies are Redding and are in pretty good shape. Set them up the same as always by the directions. I don't have a .300 WSM case gauge so I am kind of depending on Redding to have it right, but if they are only bumping the shoulder .004, I think they have to be right... All were run through the die together (no changes), and they were all fired in the same rifle. I was checking OAL and the federal stuff is all shorter than the winchester- That needed trimming, none of the Federal did. AMP looked at the pics and said they had no idea, but if I wanted to send them in, they would look at them (for a price...) I am befuddled. I have never seen anything like this, and while I have made my share of reloading mistakes, I usually can figure out where the screw up is. Right now, I'm leaning to a bad lot of brass, but normally manufacturing is pretty sharp on this stuff and where the defect is occurring makes no sense, even if the metallurgy was bad. I've still got like 150 of these nickel cases that have never been fired- they may well be throw aways... but one thing I still have to try is see if they do this if I don't anneal the case. | |||
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One of Us |
Something wrong with the die, setup or lube. Looks to be fairly awful scuffing taking place and the case mouth rolled as though it has come up against a stop shoulder of some sort. It would be impossible to have three different brands and types of case perform as badly this when only once fired, annealed or not. I'm assuming you are not just using a neck sizing die without an expander ball, so is the expander ball the correct size? Is the expander ball causing the damage on the way down through the neck or as it is pulled up through the neck? Are the necks lubed inside before sizing? Everything points to overworking or gauling of the necks and shoulders. Look at the fluff caught on the brass round the case mouths. The necks and shoulder area just don't look right to me (and others too have commented on this). Annealing does soften brass and prevent premature cracking but even if the annealing process was not set up correctly and didn't heat the brass enough, once fired cases shouldn't need annealing until after quite a few firings. | |||
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| one of us |
Why would you anneal once-fired cases? Annealing is to soften brass which has been work-hardened, which is usually not needed until the brass has been reloaded multiple times. I'm not sure what happens when you attempt to anneal nickel-plated brass. Nickel and brass have different coefficients of expansion when heated, which might cause the two metals to separate. My suspicion is that the failures you are experiencing are related to the annealing done on the cases. There is a simple test to see if this is the cause: Resize some of the same cases without annealing. | |||
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"I am befuddled. I have never seen anything like this, and while I have made my share of reloading mistakes, I usually can figure out where the screw up is" I am not familiar with the fine points of ‘bumping’; I doubt you bumped too hard or not enough. And then there is moving the shoulder back, you got me there because I do not have a clue what a case goes through when the shoulder is moved back. I have moved case shoulders back and without an exception the case bulged below the shoulder of the case. Some bulged to the point they took on the appearance of an accordion with bellows. And then there is something you have never seen; this is the third time I have seen this on eloading forums with the same effect on reloaders; I would think reloadrs could come up with better answers; reloading forums have tension-nears. They have bench resters that have such a grip on neck tension they can seat a bullet then stand the case up if they want the bullet to slice into the case. Going the other way they can tilt the case down if they want the bullet to slide out of the neck. That leaves me to imagine a bench rester shaking his rifle back and forth to seat the bullet into the lands or to increase bullet jump. I am the fan of bullet hold; I want all the bullet hold I can get. And then there is the ‘out in front of the bullet’, out in front of my bullet I want space, I want my bullet to have that jump, I want my bullets to have that running start. Your pictures: If you are looking for a singular answer you are out of luck, it appears to me you have case necks with little to no room to expand. In the perfect world the neck chamber would be clean and smooth, you have something between the case neck and chamber neck that is trying to shred the neck. If there is any truth to the tight neck the bullet is having trouble getting started. Problem? Yes, In my zip-code a tight neck adds a factor; that would be time, I do not want my necks to delay bullet release, it should be obvious, when there is a delay in bullet release the powder has more time to get serious, that means nothing to a bumper but when the bullet hits the rifling there is another delay/bullet slowdown. Again, I am the fan of the jump start, when my bullet hits the rifling I want my bullet past the rifling before it knows it is there; there could be nothing more horrifying than a bullet stopping at the rifling ‘sitting still’ while everything behind it is getting serious. And then there is SFC and LSC. That would be SHORT FAT CASE and LONG SKINNY CASE. That means nothing to a tensioner but on my SFCs the short column of powder takes less time to burn than the powder column in my LSCs. If we add the SFC to the TN we get hot high metal cutting gas passing the shoulder neck juncture. I understand I upset a lot of Internet reloaders with sayings like “I have cases that will never form a donut, I have cases that form donuts before I ever fire them and I have cases that are designed to form donuts” I have cut cases when fired that had the appearance they were hit with a shaped chamber, no one will believe the case split first and the hot high metal cutting gas filled the area between the case and chamber. The split looked like a gas cut case body. F. Guffey
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| One of Us |
The pics with the neck splits suggest to me the sizing die is setting too far down, thus compressing the brass. From the pics I'm also assuming you're using a Full Length die. If you followed Reddings directions setting up the die / press you may be setting shoulders back further than you think. If it were me I would experimentally unscrew the FL die gradually ( 1/4 turn each time ), size a case then chamber it to see if it still chambers comfortably. Keep going in 1/4 turn reversal until you start feeling tightness when chambering the case. Then, either stop there or 1/8 - 1/4 turn the die down again before setting that as the die position. If by then the neck splitting has stopped you should have solved the problem. If the issue persists then maybe it is bad brass, although this would be highly unusual I think. I can't comment on annealing as I have no experience. To me it doesn't look like the neck expander plug is the cause. But if you want to check, then unscrew and remove the stem from the die before sizing a few cases and see if you still get splits. Don't forget to run these cases back through again when the stem / expander is replaced otherwise you will have trouble seating bullets. Hope you get it sorted. Good luck. Hunting.... it's not everything, it's the only thing. | |||
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I've annealed nickel plated cases for 7-30 Waters and 470 NE several times each with no issues. I note a ring-like "step" immediately behind the shoulder on all your sized cases. Is it present prior to re-sizing? Dave Manson | |||
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All of my neck sizing dies know where the shoulder begans. If he is using a full length sizing die the only thing that can get in the way is a case with a neck that is too long. F. Guffey | |||
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| One of Us |
Since it seems a consistent theme was I was over resizing the cases, I went and pulled a couple of old loads and compared them. This is using a Sinclair shoulder collet (what they term bump gauge)on a mitutoyo caliper. I pulled the bullets used with a Hornady collet puller, so maybe it changes the shoulder a bit, I don't know. The older reloaded ammo was with Federal nickel cases- 1.7255" to shoulder datum line. The factory ammo was 1.7265" to same. The annealed and resized winchester and federal brass cases were 1.7230". So it was a little bit shorter, but I was pretty surprised that only .0035" would make that much difference. I'm not sure that would do it. Coincidentally I tried to measure the Federal Nickel plated ones that look bad. I could not get a consistent measurement, but they were around 1.76 or so, with no real contact with the whole shoulder to the gauge. Next time I will try the less sizing and see if it changes things. Yes, they are full length resizing dies- I pretty much am a hunter with repeating rifles, so I do the full length resize on hunting rounds or rounds going in to a military style semi auto. I am OK with some degree of decreased case life there, but I have not seen the separation ring before primer pockets get too loose. I have had some case loss to cracked necks in some of my more oddball hunting guns- .416 Rigby, .470 NE, .318 WR, after only 1-2 shots, so that was the primary impetus for getting the annealer, along with burned fingers and poor results from the candle method. I have also hear some folks claiming improved accuracy with annealed cases, so a secondary part of what is going on here is an attempt to compare the annealed rounds with unannealed rounds and see if I see a difference. My .300 WSM is not one of my better shooting guns, so that made it a good choice to see if I see anything. I do see the "galling" mentioned. Looking at it in person, I'm not sure if its galling, or if the case is soft enough to show some grit picked up. The pulling of ammo showed that the annealed cases are more consistent with their neck tension than the others, at least to my feel. The ring just before the shoulder on the case looks like it is part of this particular die, as its present on all of the cases ran through it, regardless of length. Thanks for the input! If anyone knows or suspects more, feel free to add more... | |||
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| One of Us |
A couple questions and bit of experience I've had. Too tight a neck will, or has for me at least. Split the shoulders, not the neck. Those necks look scratched like the die has grit or a burr. Try polishing that area a bit with 600 grit paper. Use a Q tip and see if there's any snags in the die at the shoulder area. Again: WHY are you annealing after the first firing??? How hot are you heating them, red hot? OR just enough to change the color? Are you quenching in water? IF so, DON'T!! Let 'em air cool. Two things I've done. .222mags, shot 'em and full length sized each time: over 60 times, yes sixty! Never annealed, cleaned, or trimmed any. Yes, they looked nasty. Barrel gave out before the brass did. At the end: still had 95 cases, one split a neck, two lost, two crushed in the press. Only time I've ever annealed was resizing 7mm and 300 RUM's to .35. Split 75-80 %. Annealed 20: quenched 10, air cooled 10. 7 of the quenched split, not any of the air cooled did. So I annealed and air cooled the other 450 cases and never split another one out of the whole 460. (picked up ten from the range bucket) To me, that proves air cooling is the way to do it. I bought these 500 cases from various others and know some had been fired quite a few times. Before I got things figured out. I'd split 47 of them. Mighty costly at a buck each. Just sharing my own experiences. Take it or leave it. Again: Why are you annealing after the first shot?? George "Gun Control is NOT about Guns' "It's about Control!!" Join the NRA today!" LM: NRA, DAV, George L. Dwight | |||
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| One of Us |
I'm surprised to hear you have had cracked cases in 416 Rigby, 470 NE and 318 WR after only 1 or 2 shots. These are not odd ball and cases for these cartridges should be as good as any other modern brass. Yes can accept if the ammo is very old pre 70's stuff that has been sitting round for a few decades like my Berdan primed Kynoch factory 404 ammo is. Brass can be become brittle with just age and not work hardening. Apart from annealing my 404 brass, Kynoch because of age but also RWS which were brand new back in the early 80's but now have been reloaded countless times, I have never annealed any other brass of any brand or calibre despite reloading a lot of it countless times too. There is no such thing as over sizing brass other than pushing the shoulder back and increasing headspace. Most often this leads to incipient separation of the case head (bright ring or even crack around the case head just in front of the solid web. Setting a die up in the press to touch the case holder i.e. maximum you can force the case into the die, should not cause cracked necks or shoulders. What case lube are you using? The cases in the first photo are showing brass being shaved from the necks and accumulated at the neck/shoulder junction. Is the ring at the shoulder/case wall junction also caused by shoulder brass being swaged and rolled over the case wall. I can't see how anything in the die would put a ring around the top of the shoulder like that other than as I have theorized. The case mouths look terrible too. Everything has an appearance of being swaged without lube and crammed into a too small a die. Plenty of cases get swaged down or opened up into other calibres e.g. 308W to 7mm-08, 243W opened up to 7mm-08, 26-06 opened up to 6.5-06, etc., all without annealing first and all without cracking and splitting. Done them all myself never split one. Use Imperial Wax case lube, the best there is, but plenty of others perfectly satisfactory. You've presented a real challenge, hard to solve over the internet, but trying another FL die and good lube would be where I would start. Good luck. | |||
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If my chamber has excessive head space I off set the length of the chamber from the shoulder to the bolt face with the length of the case from the shoulder to the case head. If my case does not cover the difference the difference between the two is clearance; and that leaves my case without head spacer. F. Guffey | |||
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These are not neck sized. The neck sizing dies I have for a competition and varmint rifle act like you are talking about. Those are set up differently... that isn't my issue here. | |||
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| One of Us |
Since you had cracked necks in other calibers also, I think you screw most of your sizer die in too much. Get to the problem by screwing the sizer die out 1/4, then 1/2, then 3/4 and then a full turn out / away from the shell holder like suggested above. Maybe you did not have this problem in the past but when you get the specific component you get this problem because the sizer die is overdoing it's job. Also, be careful not to over-lube neck area on the outside and there should be no lube on the shoulder. These cases show some deforming due to too much lube on the shoulder area. Remember Redding dies are the only dies these days that does not have a vent hole on the shoulder and this cause dented shoulders much easier. Then a second problem with Redding dies is that their expander balls are a different design than other brands and therefor the inside of case necks requires a bit more lube that say other brands. If the dies is giving you a "sqeecky" noise when the expander ball is on it's way out of the case neck, you definitely need more lube on the insider of the neck. The solution here is to install a carbide expander ball from Redding or do the following: when resizing the brass push the case neck about 2-3 mm into the wax, then wipe the lube off on the rest of the neck and then lube the body of the case. There should be zero lube on the shoulder. Imperial lube is the best, but you must get the feel of what is enough lube. You can only get that if you reload frequently. One is never too old to learn. I learn more every day after 36 years of reloading. | |||
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The cracked necks in the .318 were with firing, not with resizing. I certainly could be over resizing- I note that this run the cases were shorter to the shoulder line than factory ammo, but I generally just follow the directions and then see if the case easily rechambers (in hunting rifles- in the varmint or target guns there I want a little effort to close the bolt). I am not using the headspace reducing shell holders that they offer- in this caliber. I do have some for a .223 that has really tight headspace and have never seen this with loads that are actually substantially shorter than SAAMI making once fired range brass from other rifles usable in that rifle- which is why I didn't think it was a matter of overresizing- unless its just this one die that has the issue- in which case, I'd think its a die problem. Until now, I also never used lube inside the neck of a case- never had issues there. Thanks for the tip on getting a carbide resizer ball though- that sounds like a useful thing to do regardless of what else is going on! | |||
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Your annealing might make what am about to say invalid  Brass that goes quite a long time between loadings/resizing will often do what your cases show. For example if you FLS and shoot the brass once a week it will last many more shots than if it has a few months between FLS. With the nickel plating I have never used such brass. Perhaps friction is different in the die and maye the brass is made different if the intention is to nickel plate the brass. | |||
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| One of Us |
l would strongly suggest you contact Redding, as your die has a fault at the body/shoulder junction as per D Manson's observation of the odd annular ring. There may also be other issues within the die which are causing the necks to split (too tight?) l had the very same problem with a Redding 7x57 Ackely die, which they gladly replaced once l had sent them photo's of the brass issue and then proved that l had destroyed the original die (sending it back from Blighty would have been expensive) | |||
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| one of us |
a wild thought - but here goes Could you be sizing with the bullet seating and crimping die by mistake. | |||
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For whatever reason, 300 wsm brass has more premature neck splits by a large margin over other calibres. Is it the shit brass? Probably. Most W-W neck split on me after only a couple firings. Some on firing. Some on sizing. | |||
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When the WSS came out it drove reloaders to the curb. I suggested there was something about short/fat cases that changed time, most were having trouble sizing the cases to chamber. The WSM does not behave like a 30/06, the reloader has to adapt. F. Guffey | |||
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Perhaps also measure a fired case? No point comparing your die settings with new brass, or previously loaded brass, you need to know how the die setting compares to what's coming out of your rifle, not what's going in. | |||
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