Dented Case Shoulders

[mhamlin]

Gentlemen, I purchased some "once-fired" 300 RUM cases online. All of the cases have dented shoulders and at least one has a dent in the body as seen in one of the pictures. The dented shoulders almost look wrinkled, because of their multple dents.

I have been reloading for just a couple of hunting seasons and have not seen anything like this before...I have put a small single dent in a few shoulders, because I used too much case lube before...but I'm not sure what's going on with these cases.

As you all know 300 Rum cases are hard to get. These were already sized and primed, not what I wanted, but what I could get. My assumption is that these are junk, but I don't have enough experience to know if they are useable.

Any help will be appreciated!

View attachment Dented 300 RUM Case.pdf View attachment Dented 300 RUM Case 2.pdf

Thanks, Mike

 

[savagekindaguy]

My bet is too much lube on the shoulder and a mechanical dent on the side of the case. Maybe it hit something when it was ejected or was dropped and stepped on and damaged during the resizing process.

How bad is the dent on the side of the case? If it is deep and has some kind of deep scratch or cut I would discard it. The only way you will be able to know if the cases with the wrinkles are still good is to shoot them. Do tht at your own risk. Or have a gunsmith look at them and see what he says.

 

[FearNoWind]

The pdf file is pretty large - but I did finally get to download.
That's a pretty deep dent and if that dent in the image has penetrated the case I'd trash it. Also, the color of the case causes me to suspect it's been annealed. Rhetorical question, to be sure be, was it done properly?
I've found that most minor dents in cases aren't serious as long as they haven't caused cracks in the body of the case. Most of them just iron out.
Case shoulder dents can often be traced to too much lube in resizing but it's always a very good idea to do a complete and thorough check of the interior of dies and give them a regular cleaning.

 

[Thebear_78]

I agree too much lube, they should iron out when shot

 

[MagnumManiac]

My bet is too much lube on the shoulder and a mechanical dent on the side of the case. Maybe it hit something when it was ejected or was dropped and stepped on and damaged during the resizing process.

How bad is the dent on the side of the case? If it is deep and has some kind of deep scratch or cut I would discard it. The only way you will be able to know if the cases with the wrinkles are still good is to shoot them. Do tht at your own risk. Or have a gunsmith look at them and see what he says.

The dent on the side, not the shoulder, suggests to me that the cases have been annealed too soft, as does the colour of the necks, shoulder and case body. After annealing several thousabd pieces of brass, I can tell most times when the brass is over annealed, the tell tale is that the brass loses it's shininess and goes that dull red/rouge colour. For you, I hope this isn't the case.
If you have another piece of brass that isn't annealed, you can use a vice grip to squeeze a non annealed case to see where the springyness is on the neck, then do the same to the necks on the annealed cases, if the annealed cases do not spring back with the same amount of force and dent and stay like it, then, unfortunately, those cases are toast.

Cheers.
gun)

 

[Canadian Bushman]

Dents are probably from a combination of too much lube and aggressive FL sizing.

If you try to push a shoulder neck and body back too much at once that is what you get. Since they are "resized and primed" im betting the seller was more concerned about selling then sizing.

This can be fireformed out, but i would use light bullets with starting loads, because im betting with those big dents and all that headspace, the web is gonna stretch. I would want to reduce that effect as much as possible.

As for the annealing. I never look into the color of an annealed case for indication of heat. Different methods with different brass can result in a large variety of colors. Often after a sonic bath my annealed cases have a red hue.

There is also no such thing as over annealing. There can only ever be a fully annealed case. If the case is too soft to properly hold a bullet after seating in its fully annealed state then this is the condition most refer to as "ruined". Its said to be ruined because the target of annealing is more/less restorative annealing for most reloaders. Even if it cant hold a bullet it can be sized up or down and then back to 30 cal in order to harden enough to properly hold a bullet.

My largest concern with others annealing is how far down the case did the heat travel? With a long RUM case id think the reloader would have to be extremely negligent to anneal a critical part of the case by inducting too much heat at the neck/shoulder but its always a concern of mine when the process was performed by someone i dont know.

I think the brass is salvageable but its gonna boil down to how much work are you willing to put into these cases and how long are they going to last.

Best of luck

 

[Lefty7mmstw]

I'm with Canadian bushman on this one... shoot them with a mild load to iron out the dents...

 

[mhamlin]

I'm going to give these a try and see how it all works out. Thanks to everyone for your input.

Mike

 

[MagnumManiac]

Dents are probably from a combination of too much lube and aggressive FL sizing.

If you try to push a shoulder neck and body back too much at once that is what you get. Since they are "resized and primed" im betting the seller was more concerned about selling then sizing.

This can be fireformed out, but i would use light bullets with starting loads, because im betting with those big dents and all that headspace, the web is gonna stretch. I would want to reduce that effect as much as possible.

As for the annealing. I never look into the color of an annealed case for indication of heat. Different methods with different brass can result in a large variety of colors. Often after a sonic bath my annealed cases have a red hue.

There is also no such thing as over annealing. There can only ever be a fully annealed case. If the case is too soft to properly hold a bullet after seating in its fully annealed state then this is the condition most refer to as "ruined". Its said to be ruined because the target of annealing is more/less restorative annealing for most reloaders. Even if it cant hold a bullet it can be sized up or down and then back to 30 cal in order to harden enough to properly hold a bullet.

My largest concern with others annealing is how far down the case did the heat travel? With a long RUM case id think the reloader would have to be extremely negligent to anneal a critical part of the case by inducting too much heat at the neck/shoulder but its always a concern of mine when the process was performed by someone i dont know.

I think the brass is salvageable but its gonna boil down to how much work are you willing to put into these cases and how long are they going to last.

Best of luck

Sorry to burst your bubble, but over annealing is real, the grain structure of the metal moves from being salvageable to ruined, as you call it, and yes, the clour and lack of shininess are a dead giveaway in BRASS. Once past a golden honey colour, the grains have moved so far apart 5hat they will never be able to re-set in parallel structure. 680ºF for 6-8 seconds is optimum, once brass has been heated above 880ºF, even for a second, it is ruined and will NEVER RETURN to the correct grain structure even after being worked.

lightbulb

 

[Canadian Bushman]

Sorry to burst your bubble, but over annealing is real, the grain structure of the metal moves from being salvageable to ruined, as you call it, and yes, the clour and lack of shininess are a dead giveaway in BRASS. Once past a golden honey colour, the grains have moved so far apart 5hat they will never be able to re-set in parallel structure. 680ºF for 6-8 seconds is optimum, once brass has been heated above 880ºF, even for a second, it is ruined and will NEVER RETURN to the correct grain structure even after being worked.

lightbulb

Ok

But ive loaded many rounds and shot many wonderful groups with "ruined" brass.
If you have some you cant use id be happy to take it off your hands.

 

[jessegibson1978]

If the grain structure has been to that point he will know on the first lite load. The neck will split. Try one and look it over very closely wouldn't waste components on all till I checked one. Hope your range is close by.

 

[mhamlin]

It will be a couple of weeks before I will have a chance to get to the range. I'll post the results then.

Thanks, everyone for your input!
Mike

 

[Reloader222]

I got rid of dents in .222rem cases with 5.5gr MP200 (equal to Unique) with a decron plug on top. Barrel was a little dirty afterwards, but it saved me some bullets. It looked like snow on the lawn!

 

[mhamlin]

I finally had a chance to shoot this brass. I'm doing load development for my new 300 Rum and I shot 30 rounds today. No problems at all, with any of them.

Thanks for your help everyone!


Mike