In a recent thread, the pro’s and con’s of using used brass as a hand loader was bantered about. I’m apposed as it seems to always have one issue or another. I was reminded of that again today. I recently had a rifle rebarreled in 30-06 and I had about 75 Lapua cases left over from another 30-06 I’d had. The trouble is, approximately 50 of them were once fired.
Upon the rifles arrival, I took a fired case, FL resized it and it would not chamber. This is not at all uncommon, especially given factory chamber and custom minimum spec chambers. They don’t often swap well. Normally this sizing anomaly is at the case head. Measuring these seemed to bear this out.
The 45 ACP happens to have the same case head dimensions as the 30-06 (actually I think this was by military design). Quite often a 45 ACP die will reduce case head dimensions more than a standard FL 30-06 die will, so I ran some FL resized cases through a 45 ACP die and that proved to reduce dimensions enough to allow cases to chamber. $75 worth of cases salvaged. Or so I thought.
I developed a few loads previously with the new Lapua cases I had and now decided to load up these salvaged homely cases and head out shooting this morning. I fired my first round and that’s when I noticed a problem. As I began to extract the case, the bolt handle came to a sudden halt about 2/3 of the way into its upward travel. Uh oh. Fortunately with a little oomph and a click, the primary extraction did it’s job and out came the case.
Over pressure and neck sized cases can also produce this wonderful hitch in your get along. With that much pressure, though, primers usually look abused and case heads show brass flow. Everything looked fine. So being the reckless sort I donned my Covid mask and goggles and chambered another round. Same result and case head and primers still looked normal. Phew. Trouble is, now I’ve got two holes in the target touching and my arrogance won’t let me quit while I’m ahead. Number three. No change. And I couldn’t blink or flinch for fear of ruining what I’d come for. The hand loaders DaVinci was being painted 100 yards down range and this fair maiden needed eyebrows.
By now I’m thinking this a brass issue. There is no soot on my PPE and my fingers are all there but in the back of my mind I’m wondering if the powder scale was set right. But with this kind of apparent pressure it would have to be off noticeably. And my charge rests at the base of the neck. An overcharge of that magnitude would be noticeable. Wouldn’t it? There are two ways to find out. Pull a bullet or run one over the chronograph.
My scale and bench are not here, but my chronograph is so what is a man to do? I reach for the chronograph. With some trepidation I dump the contents of my chronograph onto the bench and start to affix it to my rifle. In the back of my mind, I’m thinking I want this barrel as cool as the cucumber I’m not before I insert another cartridge into that explosion chamber. So I take my sweet time doing it and before the sun can start heating my neck I sit down in the cockpit, don the hazmat suit and chamber a round. I notice out of the corner of my eye the nice custom bolt handle that has been lovingly tigged to the bolt body and reverently say my goodbyes. With tear blurred vision I bravely face the backstop, place my cheek on the comb, close my eyes and yank the trigger.
I think I squealed like a school girl when I noticed my left thumb was still attached and with clearing vision noticed the readout on the chronograph said 2904. Perfect. The bolt handle balked again, but at least it was there and my suspicions were confirmed. Being a cheapskate never pays. It left me holding the check once again. And with that debt settled I’m off to pull bullets to atone.
The Follies of Used Brass
profile is way different sharper steeper ogive so gotta play with seating depth again.
Linear Mode
