Bought several hundred rounds of HXP once fired brass several months ago, did the brass prep, and loaded a ladder to find a hunting load for mine and my son's upcoming elk hunt.

Well, we got back from the range yesterday evening and I was inspecting the brass for re-loading. I found a pinhole of maybe .015" roughly 3/4' down from the shoulder in one case. The brass didn't split upon firing, but I don't know how I would have missed the hole initially, as I inspect all brass pretty thoroughly before loading.

Anybody ever see anything like this? It makes me wonder now about the quality of the other 200+ pieces...

I always figure they make millions o pieces of brass and out of that there are going to be some weak/bad spots in some of them.
If you have only seen this in one piece so far, unless more start showing up, I would march on!

My club fires thousands of this ammo a year,I have not seen a pin hole. I have seen one primer failure that leaked around the cup.
Lead on McDuff

Found a hole in a Rem piece of new unfired brass. The longitudinal hole probably measured 3/16" x 1/16" in the middle of the case body.Looked as though a void might have been stretched during the drawing process. roger

I've been through close to 1k rounds of Greek 30/06 ammo. I've reloaded some of the brass several times with full-power loads and used it to form 9.3x62 cases before you could buy them from Graf's. I'd save the bad one as a curiosity and keep using the rest.


Okie John

If you use a lot of mil-spec brass you will eventually run across a lot of defects. I've seen small and large splits in the case body, discolorations where it looks like the alloyed metal didn't completely alloy, and even a "cut" that had oxidized copper growing out of it (I wish I had saved a picture of that).

I wouldn't hesitate to reuse the other cases, but if you continue to get the same defect or others then I would consider trashing them, depending on the number of firings and extent of defects. Gas leaking can etch whatever it's next to if enough escapes.

Yes. The hole is actually a flaw in the brass when the brass cup was newly pressed before it was then cupped and drawn into the finished case. It is a 'nick' that then gets concealed in the nature of the manufacturing process but the firing will again reveal. It's actual a 'nick' in the pressed cup.

Easy way to explain it is like making a pastry top for a pie to eat. You get a 'nick' or 'split' in the pastry as you roll it out. But rolling it out closes the edges of the 'nick' or 'split' but doesn't, of course, seal them together. So it looks like a perfect pastry sheet for your crust. You can't see the 'nick' or 'split' but it is always still there.

I've seen in in HDS .280 Ross brass I bought off HDS where every fourth or fifth case when fired revealed that tiny hole on the shoulder where it joined the neck as yours. So that got scrapped. Good news is if you don't get in on first firing then you won't get it on subsequent firings so the rest of your brass is sound.

Like I said it's a defect there since the time the brass was made. So it always reveals on first firing.

I see your hole and raise you 5 more!

I have no idea why this Lapua 30-06 case failed this way:

Speaking of HDS, I had one (404) case split longitudinally about 1/4" ahead of the web and it did not look like a tear or a crack.

I have had some new 7-08 brass with oversized primer pockets that leaked, same load in other brass just fine. Primers went in really easily, that should have tipped me off.