Never saw a case like this before today.

[bgokk]

I was cleaning 30-30 brass and found this FC case. Looks like boolits from a cold or oily mold.

I have included 5 photos rolling the case to the left in order to show all of the disfiguration. I marked the case with a sharpie to show how much of the case is disfigured. The arrow on the length wise line points toward the wrinkled area.

I have seen similar appearance on cases which were fired with some sort of trash in the chamber. It appears to have been made this way.

In the first pic look at the neck above the arrow.
#2 neck and just below shoulder.
#3 " " " " "
#4 " " below shoulder to about middle of case body
#5 shows (between the lines) portion not disfigured.


Have you ever seen this sort of defect in brass.

[plainsman456]

It does look like it was fired in a dirty chamber.

A really nasty one.

[scb]

My guess would have been oil - lots of it.

[I'll Make Mine]

Yep, looks like oil dents, except in the chamber at firing instead of in the die during full length resizing.

[lightman]

It looks like it was fired in a really dirty, oily chamber, and the split in the body says it was reloaded a bunch of times. Lightman

[300winmag]

That explains why factory ammo is costing so much, they are engraving modern art in the brass.....

[country gent]

If it was made this way Oil / Grease in the forming die. When they are forming up from the cup alot more pressure and stretching goes on than in a full length size die. The split could be stress faliure. Possibly a case that wasnt annealed properly from the start.

[Centaur 1]

My guess would have been oil - lots of it.

Might have been oil, but my guess is the gun was packed with cosmoline.

[cat223]

So, bgokk, are you thinking about retiring that piece of brass? Going with what 300winmag said, you should put it up on the wall in a shadowbox.

[bgokk]

Guys there is no split in the case. Perhaps the photos aren't clear enough.

The inside of the looks like other cases that I have that are once fired factory.

Don't know about the shadow box but it goes in the odd case collection.

[Harter66]

It may well have been very ,very old brass also .....

[Box13]

It looks like dried out oil in the chamber...

[robroy]

I saw similar on one of the first chambers I cut. I got in a hurry to test fire and forgot to clean out kerosene and chips left by the reaming process. The head still measured .4695" with all of the **** mutilating the shoulder and neck of the case. (.308 Win)

[303Guy]

Those look like thread impressions - left behind from a cleaning patch or something. What looks like a crack is an ink line - there are two, one with a right arrow at the top and the other with a left arrow at the bottom. On a high res screen they are clear but even then they look like a crack at first glance.
bgokk told us in his original post what they were. Hee hee - I guess most of us didn't read all his post first time!

[Hickory]

Brass cases are forged by hammering them into a shape that
is about 95-98% finished, then the neck is formed.
Then the neck and shoulder area are annealed to relieve the work hardening.
I've watched it done so I know.
My guess is that small pieces of brass got mixed in and caused the deformation.

[jdgabbard]

In the Army, as a quick and dirty, we would hose down the inards of our rifles with CLP to keep them running. Afterwards the brass occasionally looked like this. My guess, oil or grease.