David2011
06-02-2015, 03:42 PM
While making a run of .223 I caught a problem that could have been disastrous. The first run of about 300 was in the ammo box sorted into stripper clips, a plastic ammo box and magazines. A few days later I went back to make more.
During the second run I discovered a small quantity of decapped, cleaned, polished, trimmed and swaged brass made it to the case feeder without ever being sized. A few cartridges had necks large enough that the bullet would slip right through so those were obvious. After finding several like that, I emptied the casefeeder and checked the mouth of every cartridge in the batch to see if a bullet would enter to full diameter. The fails were resized and put back into the batch. Reloading proceeded. After making about 200 more rounds I started putting them in stripper clips and pushed a bullet down to the powder with finger pressure. I tested the remainder of the second batch by pushing each round into a hard surface with substantial hand pressure and found a total of 11 that had enough neck tension to pass the bullet diameter test with finger pressure and hold a bullet when loaded. The bullets were pulled, cartridges sized and reloaded. All passed the hand pressure test.
Feeling uneasy, I tested all of the first batch as well and all passed. I still wanted some increased security that none of these rounds would suffer a bullet setback so all 500 were removed from the magazines and stripper clips and crimped with a -.002" under neck diameter crimp from a Lee collet Factory Crimp Die.
Interestingly, all 11 of the cartridges with low neck tension passed a case gage. I didn't think to test the ones with really loose necks in the case gage. Fortunately, it seemed to be just a small batch of unsized but otherwise prepped cases in a sandwich baggie that had been added to a larger batch.
I'm afraid that had I tried to shoot one of the under-tension rounds this would have been a KaBoom post or worse.
David
During the second run I discovered a small quantity of decapped, cleaned, polished, trimmed and swaged brass made it to the case feeder without ever being sized. A few cartridges had necks large enough that the bullet would slip right through so those were obvious. After finding several like that, I emptied the casefeeder and checked the mouth of every cartridge in the batch to see if a bullet would enter to full diameter. The fails were resized and put back into the batch. Reloading proceeded. After making about 200 more rounds I started putting them in stripper clips and pushed a bullet down to the powder with finger pressure. I tested the remainder of the second batch by pushing each round into a hard surface with substantial hand pressure and found a total of 11 that had enough neck tension to pass the bullet diameter test with finger pressure and hold a bullet when loaded. The bullets were pulled, cartridges sized and reloaded. All passed the hand pressure test.
Feeling uneasy, I tested all of the first batch as well and all passed. I still wanted some increased security that none of these rounds would suffer a bullet setback so all 500 were removed from the magazines and stripper clips and crimped with a -.002" under neck diameter crimp from a Lee collet Factory Crimp Die.
Interestingly, all 11 of the cartridges with low neck tension passed a case gage. I didn't think to test the ones with really loose necks in the case gage. Fortunately, it seemed to be just a small batch of unsized but otherwise prepped cases in a sandwich baggie that had been added to a larger batch.
I'm afraid that had I tried to shoot one of the under-tension rounds this would have been a KaBoom post or worse.
David