Case exploded today !!!

Case Failure

I believe Mr Tooley is right on the money. I have seen this kind of case failure before, looks like a brass lamination.
One of the things that occurs with small capacity cartridges & heavy bullets is a sharper pressure curve resulting in higher primer pocket pressures than occur with the same cartridge & lighter bullets even when the peak pressure is similar. This puts more load on the head section of these cartridge/bullet combination. this why blanked primers occur in such rifles when using heavy bullets & do not occur in the same rifle when using light bullets. This is what has led to the now quite common practice of reducing firing pin diameter & bushing the firing pin hole to suit in these rifles. This rifle was on the verge of primer blanking. I do not think excessive pressure was the cause. .223 brass is very strong in the web due to the design of the rifles for which it was designed to be fired in (AR15's). when a case head separation occurs in a .223, it will occur half way along the case from the head, not as close to the head as in other cartridges due to the longer web taper of the .223 case.
Glad no one was seriously hurt, good modern actions do handle this kind of incident rather well.
Just my observations & Aussie 2 cents worth.
Keith H.
 
Dave Tooley said:
Mark

First the firing pin hole has either intenionaly or by accident been chamfered severly. Great pictures by the way. It needs the firing pin hole bushed and reduced in size.

Dave
Click to expand...


It looks like it could be a case of the tailstock center driven hard into the firing pin hole. A very common screw up on the "squared-and-trued" bolts.

Almost every trued Remington bolt that comes into our shop for barrel fitting has this problem.
 
Greg Walley said:
It looks like it could be a case of the tailstock center driven hard into the firing pin hole. A very common screw up on the "squared-and-trued" bolts.

Almost every trued Remington bolt that comes into our shop for barrel fitting has this problem.
Click to expand...

I agree with Greg since the bolt face retained the factory textured pattern, which it was able to transfer to the primer face...............Don
 
Greg Walley said:
It looks like it could be a case of the tailstock center driven hard into the firing pin hole. A very common screw up on the "squared-and-trued" bolts.

Almost every trued Remington bolt that comes into our shop for barrel fitting has this problem.
Click to expand...


Ka'tCHING!!!

Good call Walley....

al
 
Nothing was put into the firing pin hole, that is how it would have been from the factory.

James
 
I had this happen to me 5 years ago shooting Ultramax 308 reloaded ammunition. The extractor groove split 90 Deg. around. I was shooting this ammo in a FN Fal and it blew the magazine into one large piece of sheetmetal. When I notified Ultramax they issued a call tag for the cracked shell and remaining ammunition. After a few weeks they got back to me and determined it was faulty Lake City brass and I was not the only one. Beside's the sliver of brass in my nose, the pressure hurt like all hell.
 
Greg Walley said:
It looks like it could be a case of the tailstock center driven hard into the firing pin hole. A very common screw up on the "squared-and-trued" bolts.

Almost every trued Remington bolt that comes into our shop for barrel fitting has this problem.
Click to expand...

I have seen several new Remingtons lately right out of the box that have that "problem"... I have heard it is intentional and Remington do not correct it as it functions fine with factory ammo. Maybe a "lawyered" design.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Roll Size Brass

Ljutic said:
I had this happen to me 5 years ago shooting Ultramax 308 reloaded ammunition. The extractor groove split 90 Deg. around. I was shooting this ammo in a FN Fal and it blew the magazine into one large piece of sheetmetal. When I notified Ultramax they issued a call tag for the cracked shell and remaining ammunition. After a few weeks they got back to me and determined it was faulty Lake City brass and I was not the only one. Beside's the sliver of brass in my nose, the pressure hurt like all hell.
Click to expand...
Ultramax and Wolf Roll Size brass. Could it damage the brass? :confused:
* Roll sizing is a process which resizes the portion of the case conventional dies cannot reach
* It can return fired cases to factory dimensions
* It not only resizes the web area, it resizes the case head and cleans up the extraction groove
* Please view the following explanation
Click to expand...
http://www.wolfbullets.com/rollsize.htm
 
Bob Kingsbury said:
seems odd that the champher at the firing pin hole does not have
the textured surface that the bolt face has.
hmm, what was trued on this bolt?
Click to expand...

The bolt face was not cut and the lugs were lapped. The only cuts that were made on this rifle was to the receiver.

James
 
Shooter 65,
Let me give you some background on the ammo you were shooting. It was sold pimaraly to Highpower shooters. I know this is a Benchrest forum, please forgive me. It was sold by Maj. Carl Leisinger. He is a retired NJ highway patrolman. He is also a gunsmith and active highpower shooter. This ammo was well recieved as it was some very accurate ammo. All that said there was a recall years ago on some of it but if I remember correctly it was some ammo loaded with steel cases. You can contact Carl and ask him if it is some of the ammo that was recalled. He is a stand up guy and will talk your ear off if given the chance. If you recently purchased this ammo I would find out when the seller bought it as I have not seen it for sale since 2005. He was having problems finding brass. He runs a website for highpower shooters in the NJ area and I have provided that link. His contact info is there.

http://www.njhighpower.com/

Look under the Major Stuph sub heading. I hoe this helps tou out and I am glad your allright.

John Luitink
 
Thank you for the info.



Gundog 64 said:
Shooter 65,
Let me give you some background on the ammo you were shooting. It was sold pimaraly to Highpower shooters. I know this is a Benchrest forum, please forgive me. It was sold by Maj. Carl Leisinger. He is a retired NJ highway patrolman. He is also a gunsmith and active highpower shooter. This ammo was well recieved as it was some very accurate ammo. All that said there was a recall years ago on some of it but if I remember correctly it was some ammo loaded with steel cases. You can contact Carl and ask him if it is some of the ammo that was recalled. He is a stand up guy and will talk your ear off if given the chance. If you recently purchased this ammo I would find out when the seller bought it as I have not seen it for sale since 2005. He was having problems finding brass. He runs a website for highpower shooters in the NJ area and I have provided that link. His contact info is there.

http://www.njhighpower.com/

Look under the Major Stuph sub heading. I hoe this helps tou out and I am glad your allright.

John Luitink
Click to expand...
 
Response from Hornady...


I looked into this and it looks like a defective case. I thought it
looked like some high pressure as first but where the case failed, the
split went into the primer pocket which caused the primer pocket to get
larger. This caused the primer to come out. This is a defect in the case
when it was made. This is one reason to do not manufacture reman ammo
any longer because there is no way to guarantee the quality of the
brass. It is kind of like buying a used tire.
This is reman ammo and we normally can not replace this round for round
with 75gr match ammo. I usually offer the customer the opportunity to
choose ether from Item number 9760EL, round for round, which is a
lacquered case with a 75 gr. BTHP w/c. or equal dollar amount of a ammo
of there choice.
I tried to call you and explain this but there was no answer. If you
would like to talk about this feel free to call me and let me know what
you would like to do.
 
what ever happened to a report on the rifle
weren't we going to get a report whether the rifle was in any way a contributing factor
 
Photo of 223 brass

Dave Tooley I would like someone to section a piece of LC brass and measure the heigth/ depth of the head. Maybe post a picture. That's made to Goverment specs for a specific purpose. Slight chance there may be an issue there. [/QUOTE said:
I found this internet photo interesting. Not a good example i know.
223web.jpg
Click to expand...
 
From my point of view

The bolt head seperation is the most scarey part of this episodie. Because of "Dumb Sh - - -" things, I have overloaded to where the primers blew out and enlarged the pockets to the point where the next size up was closer to fitting but there was no evidence of the bolt head caving in!. I once inadvertently loaded 42.5g of N-130 when the powder should have been N-140 and other than big pockets and head enlargement, nothing adverse happened to the bolt. Looks like there was at least Comp "C" in that case, eh?
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top