38 spcl split case mystery...

[rpludwig]

Ruger SS Security Six, .357mag, c. 1976, rarely used and in great condition.

Took it out for a casual plinking session today, fired 20 or so factory .357's, then wanted to use up a box of my old reloads of .38spcl, 125g JHP's over 4.4g unique (very light load per my manuals).

(normally shoot target 148g wc over a mild dose of W231 in this piece)

Last 6 rounds would not eject, let the gun cool down, still no ejection, smacked the ejection rod with a plastic mallet, voila...5 out of 6 cases were split almost end to end!

That said, this piece has a tight cyl gap, likely .02-4 or so, and I have had the cyl bind up a few times in the past once heated up.

So, the question....does the tight cyl gap on a heated up wheel gun increase pressures to the extent of splitting cases??? Or is this simply an indication of fatigued brass?

I am puzzled...been reloading for this and others for 40+ years, never have encountered such a phenomenon...

(going to pull some of the remaining unfired reloads to verify powder chg wts...although I have been plenty anal in my reloading processes over the years)

Thoughts?

[Tim357]

Just a WAG, 5 will get you 10 your brass is brittle. IME, brittle brass tends to split long ways.

[Char-Gar]

I am guessing the brass was nickle plated. This stuff doesn't have a long service life and old handloads left sitting will split.

[tazman]

This is not a gun problem. It is a brass problem. I bet if you checked your primers that they look normal and not flattened.
I had something similar happen a while back but not to that extent. I was shooting some old 38 loads and would split about 1 of every other cylinder full. As Tim357 suggested, I suspect the brass just got brittle.

[rpludwig]

hmm...some brass, some nickel in that one cylinder...that's what further puzzled me...that said I have never tracked # times handgun brass has been reloaded (I do w/rifle though). Nickel I would have suspected for sure...primers are normal/not flattened...so no sign of undue pressure there...will post some pics of the brass tmrrow after I pull some of the remaining rounds to verify powder charges...

btw, reloaded these in 1993, some 23 years ago (time flys!)...contributes to the brittle brass assumption...

[bedbugbilly]

I used to like the nickel plated 38 spl brass but I found the case life pretty short for them - usually splitting from the mouth towards the base. Never had any split all the way but some did split at least half way. I haven't experienced it so much with "brass" brass but still have had a few. Like your experience . . . I don't count how many times they've been loaded and fired. And I'll add, most of what I'm using right now is "range brass" purchased from members here so who knows how many times it's been reloaded?

If you have any new brass on hand, load them up with the same load/boolit and see what happens. I'm guessing they will be just fine and maybe you've just reached the "case life" of the ones you were firing?

[Petrol & Powder]

I concur, this is a brass issue and not gun issue. I get a lot of reloads out of 38 Special cases (just shot a bunch today :D) but they do eventually split. It's never been something I worry about and I just toss them out when I find split casings.
Brass work hardens with the normal shooting/reloading cycle. Ammonia also does bad things to brass but most reloaders know to stay away from it.
I agree with bedbugbilly and the others, I think your brass just reached the end of it's service life.

[jrayborn]

Any chance they were ever cleaned with anything that may have contained ammonia in years past? That can affect brass. Seems odd all six cases failed so badly is all.

[Forrest r]

Odd???
6 different cases brass/plated with the same load, primer and bullet shot in the same firearm with the same results.

[fryboy]

Not odd just old ,brass turns brittle, somethings can enhance this,I once saw some old old loaded rounds that had never been fired - all had split on the necks from mere age

[OS OK]

Not odd just old ,brass turns brittle, somethings can enhance this,I once saw some old old loaded rounds that had never been fired - all had split on the necks from mere age

Is that worse than 'old age'…your dog is killing me!

[StrawHat]

When I was competing in PPC, split brass was a familiar thing. About every day I would hear the tingley sound of split brass in my bucket. I sorted them out just before the sizing station.

Never had 5 of six go but I do recall splits were not unusual. I used my brass a lot and never counted times reloaded.

Kevin

[Scharfschuetze]

I'm an old PPC shooter too and I fully concur with the old/brittle/nickel brass theories. It is odd that 5 of 6 cases in the very last cylinder full all split at once. Statistics would argue against that; kind of like Hillary winning 6 out of 6 coin tosses in the Iowa primary.

I've been using the same lot of Federal brass 38 Special cases from the mid 70s with only occasional cracks or splits as I anneal them now and then. I bought a thousand in bulk due to PPC needs while on the PD shooting team. The annealing process works so well that I still have a few hundred of them unfired in storage.

If you have a bunch of older cases that are work hardened from shooting and reloading, you may want to try annealing them to extend their life.

[376Steyr]

5 out 6 old cases splitting at the same time does seem statistically unlikely, especially since they seem to be the last ones fired from a boxful. I'm leaning towards those last rounds got exposed to some ammonia-type cleaner sometime in the last 23 years. By chance were they the last outside row in an ammo box tray?

[rpludwig]

Here's a pic....interesting, 3 nickel, 2 brass, one survivor...mixed headstamps not range brass, may have been reloaded perhaps 5-10x, albeit 25 yr old brass...

Load was Bullseye, not Unique as originally posted, still a minimum load...

I've always tumbled w/corn cob media, a dash of Dillon's additive (whatever that was 23 yrs ago), no ammonia exposure whatsoever...

May have more splits in the brass bucket, everything shot in a plinking session is tossed into a bucket, sorted by caliber, and inspected b4 further use later...point is, there may be more splits, but not enough to hinder ejection, as this one was. Likely much concern about nothing, attribute to fatigued brass...5 of 6 though, certainly an anomaly...

[Petrol & Powder]

I agree with the anomaly theory. In any event I think this is a brass issue and not a gun issue. I would chalk it up to one of those times when the slot machine pays out and you got 5 casing that were going to split and they all ended up in the cylinder at the same time.
I also wouldn't give it much thought. Toss the bad casings and move on. No harm, no foul.

[Fishman]

376 steyr has a good theory. What if that box of ammo was laying around somewhere, say in a drawer or on a table, when a cleaner got spritzed on one end of the box, affecting the last 5 rounds? In 23 years, something like that could happen.

[jeepyj]

In the original post it was said that unique was used but the label says BE. I just looked up that load in a couple different manuals and 4.4 is listed as a max load. Likely just me but I've never been a big fan of pushing BE to the max. My opinion only but I think I'd look in that direction plus I'd like to see how hard they're crimped. It is scary th think how many 38s I've shot with 4.5 grains of unique both nickel and brass and only get an occasional split. I know that most of my brass is twenty years plus in age.
Jeepyj

[Uncle R.]

Here's a pic....interesting, 3 nickel, 2 brass, one survivor...mixed headstamps not range brass, may have been reloaded perhaps 5-10x, albeit 25 yr old brass...

Load was Bullseye, not Unique as originally posted, still a minimum load...

I've always tumbled w/corn cob media, a dash of Dillon's additive (whatever that was 23 yrs ago), no ammonia exposure whatsoever...

May have more splits in the brass bucket, everything shot in a plinking session is tossed into a bucket, sorted by caliber, and inspected b4 further use later...point is, there may be more splits, but not enough to hinder ejection, as this one was. Likely much concern about nothing, attribute to fatigued brass...5 of 6 though, certainly an anomaly...


Years ago I shot a lot of .38 Specials in pistol leagues. I've had cases fail in just that way - they looked like the cases in your picture. I used to clean brass in a vibratory tumbler with corn cob and a teaspoon of Brasso, based on Dean Grennell's early writings. Cases got very clean, very shiny. relatively quickly.

After a few years I stopped using Brasso, based on Dean Grennell's later writings and case failures like those in your picture. I can't prove it, but I suspect my case failures were ammonia related.

Uncle R.

[Char-Gar]

In the original post it was said that unique was used but the label says BE. I just looked up that load in a couple different manuals and 4.4 is listed as a max load. Likely just me but I've never been a big fan of pushing BE to the max. My opinion only but I think I'd look in that direction plus I'd like to see how hard they're crimped. It is scary th think how many 38s I've shot with 4.5 grains of unique both nickel and brass and only get an occasional split. I know that most of my brass is twenty years plus in age.
Jeepyj

I don't know about 125 grain JHP bullets, having never loaded nor fired any. I have loaded hundreds of thousands of 38 Specials over the past and 100% of them have been loaded with 150 - 165 grain cast bullets. BE is my most used powder and 3.5 grains is the max I would ever use. Go past that with those bullets and you are asking for trouble.

95% of my loads use 3/BE which is easier on the revolver, the brass and myself. I do load some with 3.5/BE in case I need to hit something really hard.

[9.3X62AL]

Lotta good thoughts expressed herein, and I see nothing to disagree with. 4.4 grains of Bullseye is a mite warmish for a 38 Special, but let's recall the OP's revolver make/model......Ruger Security-Six. Such loads won't strain THAT TANK one iota. I surely wouldn't run them in my 1949 Colt OMT, but that's beside the point.

I lean toward the consensus view that some combination of aging--work hardening--and/or chem exposure caused these cases to fail under what might be slight/relative over-pressure for the caliber (but certainly not the platform). Given a long enough interval, just plain old air can cause metal to degrade via oxidation. Add in moisture or proximity to saltwater, and the process will accelerate.

I have loaded A WHOLE LOT of 38 Special ammunition over the years, and still do--though not in the numbers I once did. The caliber was The Only Authorized Chambering at my shop for the first 10 years of my career, so I did A LOT of shooting with it. About half of that shooting was done with +P loadings, 110 grain JHP loads being Coin Of The Realm in those days. A conservative estimate of totsal numbers loaded and fired must be in the range of 40,000 or so. The same 1500 cases were used for much of that shooting and loading, a lot of it in W-W nickel-plated +P brass. Over the years, perhaps a dozen of these have split in the longitudinal fashion shown in the OP's pics. Many more have succumbed to case mouth splits, so frequent over the past few years that I scrapped all of that brass before I moved in September 2015. It was worn out. I have lost a few unplated W-W casings to mouth splits, but I can't recall a longitudinal body split to date in any maker's unplated 38 Special cases. I am down to about 450 pieces these days, which is enough for my current purposes. There are no 38 Special arms in my carry gun cadre at this time, just 357 Mag--45 ACP--and 40 S&W.

[tazman]

Lotta good thoughts expressed herein, and I see nothing to disagree with. 4.4 grains of Bullseye is a mite warmish for a 38 Special, but let's recall the OP's revolver make/model......Ruger Security-Six. Such loads won't strain THAT TANK one iota. I surely wouldn't run them in my 1949 Colt OMT, but that's beside the point.

I lean toward the consensus view that some combination of aging--work hardening--and/or chem exposure caused these cases to fail under what might be slight/relative over-pressure for the caliber (but certainly not the platform). Given a long enough interval, just plain old air can cause metal to degrade via oxidation. Add in moisture or proximity to saltwater, and the process will accelerate.

I have loaded A WHOLE LOT of 38 Special ammunition over the years, and still do--though not in the numbers I once did. The caliber was The Only Authorized Chambering at my shop for the first 10 years of my career, so I did A LOT of shooting with it. About half of that shooting was done with +P loadings, 110 grain JHP loads being Coin Of The Realm in those days. A conservative estimate of totsal numbers loaded and fired must be in the range of 40,000 or so. The same 1500 cases were used for much of that shooting and loading, a lot of it in W-W nickel-plated +P brass. Over the years, perhaps a dozen of these have split in the longitudinal fashion shown in the OP's pics. Many more have succumbed to case mouth splits, so frequent over the past few years that I scrapped all of that brass before I moved in September 2015. It was worn out. I have lost a few unplated W-W casings to mouth splits, but I can't recall a longitudinal body split to date in any maker's unplated 38 Special cases. I am down to about 450 pieces these days, which is enough for my current purposes. There are no 38 Special arms in my carry gun cadre at this time, just 357 Mag--45 ACP--and 40 S&W.

The OP said 4.4 of Unique not Bullseye. The Unique load mentioned is a light to middling load, nowhere near +P.

[jeepyj]

The OP said 4.4 of Unique not Bullseye. The Unique load mentioned is a light to middling load, nowhere near +P.
Tazman, take a look at the picture of the ammo label that the OP posted in post 15 showing his load data. This is what I based my post on.
jeepyj

[Shooter6br]

Had a Taurus 44 mag (light version) split new Starline brass first time I shot it. Not so in Contender 44 mag(1976 model) Sold the Taurus

[rpludwig]

guys...great responses, thus far, I appreciate the various diagnoses...

Just to clarify, originally I had posted it as Unique, clarified in post #15 as it was/is indeed Bullseye as indicated on the cartridge box label...looking @ Hornady #9 manual, I see 4.5g Bullseye under 125gJHP as minimum load yielding 800fps...fwiw... (and Unique min 5.1g same velocity)..

As to storage over these past 20+ years, always in a locked cabinet, loaded ammo only, no solvents in the vicinity...

At this point, I chalk it up to simply old/fatigued brass...any additional thoughts most welcomed!

[Greg S]

How old were the reloads. Travelling all over the states I had some ammo stored in an unheated garage that sweated at some point and welded the bullets to the cartridge case. Each cartridge fired the nech split on once fired brass (6mm Rem, 357 Max and 7mm STW). ONCE i noticed it, I seated all bullets about .030-.050 deaper breaking the weld/corrosion and good to go. The roll crimp got the green mallet till the bullet moved then reseated. I sometimes still have that problem since I have less time to shoot.

Pull a few apart and have a looksie.

[tazman]

Tazman, take a look at the picture of the ammo label that the OP posted in post 15 showing his load data. This is what I based my post on.
jeepyj

You are correct. He did use Bullseye. However I have at least 3 manuals( I stopped looking after finding three) that list 4.4 grains of Bullseye with a 125 JHP as a standard load for 38 special. Still not a +P load.

[MarkP]

Examine your remaining loaded rounds there are probably very small cracks at the mouth. SCC (stress corrosion cracking) AKA season cracking. For SCC to happen there needs a tensile load such as a bullet inserted in case mouth and slight exposure to a ammonia substance or IIRC an amine. Seen it on the drawn copper cups on electrical fuses; the cause was slight tension due to being crimped onto the paper tube, the paper was treated with something to prevent mold from growing. Solved one problem and created another.


This can be controlled with inner-stage annealing during the manufacturing process. To test the susceptibility of SCC a mercurous nitrate test is performed; test simulated 25 years in 10 minutes or so.

The term season cracking came about when the British tropps noticed that their mouths would split during the rainy seasons later to be traced to the horse urine in the air due to the rainfall.

[robertbank]

I picked up about 300 S&B brass cases a couple of years ago. The darn brass has almost a military crimp over the primers. Well I went to the lengthy process of swagging all the primer pockets and soon found out the folly of my ways. The primer pockets were TIGHT and a struggle to load. Being cheap, I mean frugal, I refused to just toss them in the recycle bin and have been using the brass over and over again for practice. After two years of this I am now down to less than 175. After each range session I lose about 10% of the brass to split case mouths and long lateral splits similar to the OP`s. By summers end they all should be gone. I just use the brass for practice so any difficulty in doing reloads caused by the split brass is chalked up to good practice in the event it were to happen in a match.

Old or well used brass will eventually split and it would seem the brass in question has either been work hardened from repetitive reloadings or been exposed to a chemical reaction. More likely the former not the latter. I would just use the brass up, I am frugal, and call it good. When they split toss them in your recycle bin and carry on. 38spl brass lasts a long time and doesnt cost all that much.

Take Care

Bob

[salvadore]

I doubt this is the cause, but I had new .357 brass split just like that because the crimp was letting the bullets walk after the first shot. It sounded like a squib load, but the bullet exited the barrel and the brass was split like yours.