Back Story:
I acquired a coupled of hundred 44 Mag brass a month or so ago and have been working up loads for a '94 Marlin with a 16" barrel. The brass was of unknown origin and I haven't a clue as to how many times it was reloaded nor with what. Given that the guy I got it from was what I would call "Interesting" I suspect that these things weren't loaded for mice if you know what I mean.
Currently:
I've loaded these with several different powders always using starting loads and working up to mid level of the Lyman or Hodgdon data but no higher due to leading issues when I get too carried away. The boolit is a Lee 429-200RF sized to .431+ and weighing in at 211 grains. I do seat and crimp on the same die using a turret press as this has always served me well on 44 Special and 44 Magnum. The brass is always full length sized and two loads ago since I was seeing crimps not coming all the way out after firing I decided to anneal the brass using the drill method and annealing just the case mouth for approximately 3-4 seconds with the torch turned down to very low. During annealing the case rim never got too hot to touch and the brass was dumped into a bucket of water right off the drill.
So The Question Is:
Since I'm admittedly not a "Rifle Person" I've never experienced a case head separation and typically pitch brass when the case mouth splits. Is what I'm looking at a case head separation? I'd always made the assumption that a case head failure happened lower on the brass than this which is a little below the mid point.
I'm assuming that there are those reading this that will tell me that I damaged the brass during annealing, I can't say I can completely deny that possibility but I was definitely cautious during annealing since we're not dealing with long bottle neck brass here.
I noticed no issue with this brass as I picked it up and stuck it in the shell holder. I only noticed the failure when I was wiping the cartridges down to box them. I'm guessing that the failure happened during the seating/crimping as the brass appears to be buckled to one side but I felt nothing out of the ordinary when loading. As you can probably tell, I don't get carried away with the crimp so if this happened during that stage I'd have to assume that the brass was pretty weak and thin at that area of the case.
Of course I'm not about to stick this thing in a gun and fire it as I have no desire to try to remove the front half of the brass from somewhere inside the barrel, not to mention that it probably would put my safety glasses to the test or worse.