Firing split brass? What would happen?

[AzShooter]

Years ago we would find a lot of nickle cases split much worse than that. I had one friend that would scrounge every piece of split brass and load them up for his competition loads.

He'd shoot them until they were almost split all the way. He didn't win many events he was just being frugal.

Personally. I'd fire one that just split a little but if it split lower than the bullet I would trash it.

 

[markr6754]

The only cases I have had split on firing were 380 AUTO. I keep one on my desk in the office as a conversation piece. Any others go into the scrap brass jar. I'm not sure why I have a scrap brass jar...but I do. I used to toss unwanted brass into the trash can, same as spent primers, but we are in weird times so I'm saving anything that may have a value to someone else in the future.

 

[JKP]

I use a brass catcher when I shoot so I recover all of my brass. In 9mm, I find about 1 or 2 % split.

 

[101combatvet]

I found about a hundred rounds of my old reloads of .38 Special. They had been stored in my basement for several years while I was deployed. I took them to the range and shot them all; about 70% of the cases split on me. The split cases were discarded, and the unspilt cases have been reloaded many times without incident. The split cases had been reloaded several times before but still a bit unusual.

 

[44 AMP]

There is another kind of split that doesn't come from reloading or firing. Rarely seen, but it does exist. This is "season cracking" and on those rare times you'll see it, its almost always on very old and usually rifle ammunition.

Literally, the brass hardens with age, and then cracks. And the cracks can be along the case or across it. I had some 6.5Swede rounds that did that, cracked across the body just below the shoulder. The headstamp indicated '97. As in 1897....

You can also get cracks in much newer rounds, if the powder "goes bad". Decaying smokeless powder gives off nitric acid fumes. These attack the brass, weakening it and causing cracks. Again, not common but I have seen it in some poorly storted surplus ammo.

If a case mouth cracks on loading, you can break it down, or shoot it up (for non-serious practice). If the case BODY cracks, don't even THINK about shooting it.

 

[Unclenick]

The government and private cartridge manufacturers started annealing bottleneck case necks and shoulders after the mechanism of season cracking was worked out and reported in 1921, but I don't know exactly how long the adoption took to become universal. As a result, I would expect anything made in the 1920s or earlier might possibly suffer from it, though military ammo was fast to adopt the practice.

I've had bad surplus ammo with the aging powder problem. The corrosion not only ate through cases (verdigris around the edges of the hole) but also corrode the bullets into fusion with the case, so there would be a hole at the bullet location in the case, but the bullet couldn't be pulled without stretching the case or tearing it open.

Never shoot loads with powder that is going bad like that. I put quite a number of those rounds through an M1A, and the nitric acid radicals caused fine bore rust to coat the "cleaned" bore. I then used Iosso Bore Cleaner, which is a mild abrasive like JB Bore compound, to be sure of removing the affected iron atoms, but since nitric acid fumes are used to intentionally create fine surface rust in the traditional steam cabinet rust bluing process, I suppose I could have pulled the barrel and boiled it in water for ten or fifteen minutes to convert it to black magnetite and then brushed the loose particles out. Evaporust might have worked well, too, but this was about 1994, and I don't think that product existed then.

The other reason never to shoot deteriorating powder, even if your barrel is stainless, is sometimes the deterioration can occur in a fashion that preferentially deteriorates the powder's deterrents. When that happens, the powder's burn rate goes way up, so you are shooting at higher pressures than normal. There have been photos online of rifles burst by ammo from the 1940s that was suffering from that problem, including a couple of Garand actions, which are extremely strong. So bad powder is nothing to fool with. It has to be disposed of.