brass splitting the neck dwn to shoulder

[elkstalker300]

Just shot some factory winchester 22-250 ammunition and out of 40 fired 4 split the neck dwn to the shoulder. Is this common with winchester brass? Bought them for the brass toreload and was thinking about buying 100 rounds of brass but if this is common I am going back to rem brass or maybe even buy some nosler brass at cabelas next week

 

[J E Custom]

Elk

"NO" it is not common with any new brass.

You should bring this up to winchester because it sounds like
a quality control problem.

Get the batch/Lot number off of the inside of the box before
you call and have the fired neck dia and the loaded ammo neck
O D because they will probably want to blame it on your rifle.

It should only expand about .004 over the loaded dia.

Winchester may deni any problems ,but you may save someone
else a more serious problem.

J E CUSTOM

 

[Hammer47]

measure

measure the neck diameter of a fired round that did not split and a new loaded round. Subtract the difference and it should add up to only a few thousands. If it is expanding more the fault lies in your rifle, not the brass.

 

[elkstalker300]

OK measured the neck of a new round out of the box and a round that had been fired .004 exact differance. The gun is a new remington model 700 SPS varmint w/ heavy barrel.

 

[Gunpoor]

I have had trouble lately (last year) with the Winchester brass, in the future I will buy Remington brass. My 264 Win rifle has split the shoulders on Win brass at the rate of 15 out of 100. Eleven of them split during the first firing. I have not had a single piece of Rem. brass fail in any caliber I load for.

 

[Innovative]

elkstalker300,

I've NEVER experienced cracked case necks on the initial firing, but lately I've heard of it happening to several shooters. Your .004" measurement is a sign that your rifle is OK. I always inspect my brass very carefully, and I reload a lot of Winchester brass. I've found it much more uniform than Remington brass.

I've reloaded more than a dozen different rifle calibers (since 1965), and I've only had the necks crack with one caliber. It was the 22-250 Remington. It happened about 30 years ago, and it was also with Winchester brass. However, it only happened after the cases were reloaded several times.

- Innovative

 

[Hammer47]

brass

I usually use lapua but in the past I have handloaded a lot of Winchester brass. Like it second to the Lapua. I would wager if you pulled the bullets from this factory loading and dumped the powder and punched out the primer and did an annealing job on the brass and then reassembled it the splitting problem would go away. .004 is a lot of expansion however if the brass is annealed and then neck sized the problem should go away. I know this is a lot of work but if you want to save the rest of the brass it may be the only way out of the bag. When you buy virgin brass for the first loading if it has not been annealed at the factory [like Lapua has] I would be sure to do this. When loading with anything other than lapua, I always anneal before loading. Regards...g

 

[Wild_Bill]

Win 22-250 factory ammo

Hi all the factory 22-250 Win ammo I fired in my match barreled 22-250AI cracked down the shoulder their brass has turned to crap. Every other brand of cases is fine even some old brass that was fired up to 10 times formed no problems but the Win ALL cracked.

We have also had trouble with the Match 308 ammo loaded for the NRAA has had cases with no flash hole and other cases that cracked or seperated.
Cheers Bill
Australia

 

[BigSkyGP]

Re: brass

I usually use lapua but in the past I have handloaded a lot of Winchester brass. Like it second to the Lapua. I would wager if you pulled the bullets from this factory loading and dumped the powder and punched out the primer and did an annealing job on the brass and then reassembled it the splitting problem would go away. .004 is a lot of expansion however if the brass is annealed and then neck sized the problem should go away. I know this is a lot of work but if you want to save the rest of the brass it may be the only way out of the bag. When you buy virgin brass for the first loading if it has not been annealed at the factory [like Lapua has] I would be sure to do this. When loading with anything other than lapua, I always anneal before loading. Regards...g

>
Just curious. Would you mind sharing your method for annealing brass?

 

[Trickymissfit]

Elk

"NO" it is not common with any new brass.

You should bring this up to winchester because it sounds like
a quality control problem.

Get the batch/Lot number off of the inside of the box before
you call and have the fired neck dia and the loaded ammo neck
O D because they will probably want to blame it on your rifle.

It should only expand about .004 over the loaded dia.

Winchester may deni any problems ,but you may save someone
else a more serious problem.

J E CUSTOM

for many years Winchester manufactured all their own raw brass in Indianapolis. But several years back they decided to close that plant, and who knows where the ingots come from now. I've heard that as much as 50% now comes from Asia.
gary