Trouble with Virgin brass?

[blaser.306]

I was just wondering if anyone else has had any trouble with new "virgin" Starline brass? I received 200 41 mag starline brass in a trade here in Canada about a year ago and had been waiting for a 41 mag group buy mould to be completed , so I have not fired this Contender BBL untill yesterday. I couldn't wait any more !!! I even had to break down and plug the open end with dreaded "j" word things! I also re discovered why I cast, $39.00 per 100 for Sierra .410" bullets ( ouch!!! ) anyway upon shooting the 50 that I had loaded with LIL Gun powder @ 21 gr ( under max listed ) while the BBL was shooting very accurately , 3 rounds went awry! When I opened up the gun and removed the brass from the chamber it appears that a forward portion of the case mouth left with the slug? The brass at the case mouth as well as the area where it separated measures .008" thick.78312Has anyone else had such an issue ? Any sugestions ( other than the obvious ) I will be sticking to lead as soon as a proper size mould is available!

[Char-Gar]

"couldn't wait any more !!! I even had to break down and plug the open end with dreaded "j" word things!"

I have no idea what you are talking about, but I suspect it is the source of your problem and not the brass.

[Love Life]

I'm assuming he meant he had to load those with jacketed bullets instead of lead bullets. I do not see how loading them with jacketed would cause that. Looks like crappy brass to me.

[blaser.306]

I am currently awaiting a call back from Starline? With a little luck they will not just brush me off as a "foreigner" I have and use Starline brass in 44 Mag 445 supermag and 38 super comp and it has never let me down! I was just a little more than a bit suprised to see this kind of failure from new brass of any kind !

[Char-Gar]

I'm assuming he meant he had to load those with jacketed bullets instead of lead bullets. I do not see how loading them with jacketed would cause that. Looks like crappy brass to me.

If that is what he meant, I agree with you.

[blaser.306]

If that is what he meant, I agree with you.

Precisely my meaning! I have a very strong dislike for the " j " word things! I can hardly wait for the NOE lfn 41 mould to be completed! I also have tried several Lyman moulds and have yet to find one that even drops close to .410" let alone big enough to size to .411"

[Char-Gar]

It was the "plugging the end" that was a bit muddy to me. I am from Texas and not Canada, so that might be the source of my confusion.

[rexherring]

Try annealing a few cases and see if it still does that. Looks like very brittle brass.

[Powersgt]

I don't have a 41 Mag gun yet but I have lots of 41 mag brass. I have loaded allot of .44 mag Starline, it is extremely stiff running through my 650 Dillon. Their web site says that you may need to modify the powder funnel for smoother operation of certain brass. To me this means that the brass is harder than some others which maybe the source of your problem (fracturing when loading.) For the .44, I just squirted a bit of One-Shot (case lube,) on them and everything worked out well.

V/R

Jeff

[runfiverun]

I think you got a few bad cases.
I have around 3-k 357, 3-k 45 colt, and about 2-k 44 mag in starline brass that is in rotation right now.
I load all of them on either a 550 or a 650 and have no issues.
I do use a few hundred starline 41 mag brass too and haven't had any issues.
I have had some brand new 25-06 Winchester brass crack the neck on their first firing recently however.

did you champher the case mouth??

[blaser.306]

I think you got a few bad cases.
I have around 3-k 357, 3-k 45 colt, and about 2-k 44 mag in starline brass that is in rotation right now.
I load all of them on either a 550 or a 650 and have no issues.
I do use a few hundred starline 41 mag brass too and haven't had any issues.
I have had some brand new 25-06 Winchester brass crack the neck on their first firing recently however.

did you champher the case mouth??

I didn't champher the case mouth , and these were new brass loaded with Redding dies. I will try and copy the reply that I received from Hunter Pilant @ Starline!

(" I haven’t heard of any problems with our .41 Mag brass. From the looks of the picture, I think you may be having some excessive bullet tension issues. I would make sure and clean the chamber thoroughly and reduce the crimp that you are putting on the case, I think that this will resolve your issues ")
Hunter

It sugests that there is too much neck tention and shouldn't use a very heavy crimp! But no problem with the brass.

[ddixie884]

It is possible that you have a quality problem, but I have used a lot of Star-line brass, and never had a problem.............

[Love Life]

Still looks like junk brass to me...

[TXGunNut]

Still looks like junk brass to me...

It happens. I bought a case of PMC 20-25 yrs ago for the brass, pretty disappointed when a high percentage split. Starline is my go-to brass when I buy straight-walled brass for many cartridges but I guess something happened. Will be interesting to see how the rest of the batch behaves, just be sure to check the bore for obstructions after each shot. I suspect a j-word encountering a bit of scrap brass would be something to avoid.

[josper]

I have used starline brass in both 45-70 and 45colt and never had a problem. I would give them a call.

[Longone]

Probably nothing but the case on the left has an unusual horizontal line just below where it separated on the inside of the case. Does the outside have a corresponding mark?

Longone

[Stephen Cohen]

Some years back a good friend of mine had a Colt Python, that would not accept a correctly trimmed 357 mag shell in any chamber until they were trimmed some 30to40 thousand. He found after seating a cast bullet and crimping it they would fit, against my advice he used this method but could never get gun to shoot well and pressure seemed high. His chambering problem was cured, and accuracy solved by just trimming shells. I should point out the chambers on this revolver were clean and were not fouled buy lead or copper so this was not the problem. I mention this because the first shell shown does seem to show a crimp line on the inside of what is left of case mouth, and at least two shells look to have expansion at the web, If this is not the case them I would say bad brass and if it were my gun and my face next to it I would scrap the brass if you cant get any joy from Starline.

[mikeym1a]

The only problem I've ever had with virgin brass was that there was no boolit, powder, or primer in them!!!:-P

[blaser.306]

These rounds were fired from a 14" contender and as Most will know they have "rather generous" chambers! The BBL and chamber were squeaky clean . The load was 21 gr LIL gun, the odd piece of brass was a little tighter on extraction than others , not enough to be noteworthy! I have already contacted Starline and the reply ( quote ) that I received back is in one of the posts above. Too much neck tention? reduce crimp! These were crimped tight enough to remove the bell and slightly roll the case mouth into the cannelure. I have loaded 10's of thousands of rnds of pistol and have a vague idea what is going on! I will have to make up a annealing block and try to take some of the brittle out of these necks and try them again.

[plainsman456]

A while ago a friend of mine had some win brass fro the 41 mag that split when loading them with any type of bullet.

We annealed some and the splitting was reduced.

We placed a call to win and they had us send that batch back and sent another 1000 in their place.
They said it was a hard brass problem and thanked us for letting them know.

The new batch all loaded and shot fine.

[mac60]

You don't know what the previous owner did with them or what conditions he stored them in. I have some .41 mag Starline brass I've loaded 20 times - no issues.

[blaser.306]

You don't know what the previous owner did with them or what conditions he stored them in. I have some .41 mag Starline brass I've loaded 20 times - no issues.

These are / were new brass from a retailer here in Canada.

[mac60]

Oh Ok. I thought maybe you got them through a trade with a private individual. My first thought when looking at the pictures were that maybe they were exposed to ammonia or something.

[HATCH]

I have loaded and shot thousands of 41 mag starline.
Never had that problem.
Now I do know that 45 colt starline brass is hard the first time I size them.

[357maximum]

I didn't champher the case mouth , .

That is the first issue I would fix before I looked anywhere else......I have seen "too lazy to chamfer" cause issues on my own loads....normally it is an extraction issue(38spcl, 32 long), but I have NEVER once skipped that step on a higher intensity round. I was taught to always chamfer the mouth on new brass, and both times I have skipped that step to save time it bit me square on the ****. If the case has a burr and the boolit/bullet "grabs" that burr at the boolit is lunging forward.......it could theoretically cause what you picture shows.......theoretically......in a TC chamber I doubt it.....but I doubted Obama part deu ever happening also.

[country gent]

I had that same thing with Blasser 44 spls ( aluminum cases) I contacted CCI thru an e-mail about the issue and thier reply ( with in an hour) was do not shoot any more ups it back to us. I boxed it and shipped 3 boxes back. I had 5 cases from 2 boxes with chunks missing with several spl;it necks. I had fired them in a Taurus titanium 2 44 spl revolver. No other loads reloads did this. CCI sent 6 boxes back from a diffrent lot number and a letter stating there was an issue with stress/hardness in the cases. You may be encountering the same thing here.

[Love Life]

Why is everybody shooting the messenger? Maybe starline let a little junk out of the factory...

[blaser.306]

Regardless of how or why , I will just have to experiment with this and either make it work or toss it! Starline has pretty much washed their hands of this. A little suprising to me as I have been loading Starline in 44 Mag , 445 supermag ,and 38 supercomp and have never had anything but good things to say! The odd 445 supermag will go the way of the scrap brass bin , but I think that can be expected? I will have to try and anneal the mouths of a few of the once fired ones before I move on to doing the remaining "new" ones. It realy wouldn't bother me as much if we paid for our brass the way the folks in the US do!