Need a diagnosis

[Mike Irwin]

"I'm a novice by most standards, all but #4 looks like too much pressure to me."

No, most likely not.

I've had similar case failures with light .38 wadcutter loads. It's a case failure caused by a flaw of some type.

 

[Foxbat]

"Foxbat, at what point do you back up and punt on this load? Four guns blown up? Do you still shoot this load? "

I have to admit, I was curious about its behavior in different guns, mainly due to consistent stream of glockophobia. Turned out Glock was perhaps the most resistant to this type of a failure.

After the early incidents I simply started shooting wearing gloves, that made all the difference - without them my right hand had a persistent sore on top of the palm.

Having done my tets I simply sorted the whole batch - there were several hundred rounds still left. I segregated the Winchester ones, and pulled the bullets. The rest of the batch fired without any issues.

 

[Foxbat]

"Wow...I thought my dedication to S&W K-Frames was unhealthy "

Nothing's unhealthy on forum like this one!

Here is one of my Glock racks, I have three.

 

[Brian Pfleuger]

Which one would you feel safer shooting,after market replacement barrel on left or Glock factory barrel on right. The blown case in the first post was Federal the case in my post was RP both were reloads and fired from Glocks. the main reason it show up more is because there are more Glocks out there and many of the new mfg pistols have switched over to the Glock style barrels. It's just a poor design that was never meant to shoot reloaded ammo in.

It should be noted that not all calibers in the Glock line up show such an extreme unsupported area. My Glock 33 (357sig) has better chamber support than the aftermarket barrel in those pictures:

While my Lone Wolf barrel actually has WORSE support than stock:

On another note, I'm a complete novice but those primers look very normal to me. I've been using Federal primers in my reloads and they almost universally flatten and mushroom slightly regardless of load from 7.1gr all the way through 8.1gr Power Pistol with Hornady 124gr XTPs.

 

[SL1]

Foxbat,

Is it possible that the Winchester cases were previously fired in a glock, perhaps even with excessive charges, before they were reloaded and fired again to create the blown-cases? Or, did they blow when they were fired as WW Whitebox loads?

SL1

 

[Foxbat]

Speaking of "unsupported" chambers, here are three shells - the one on the left was fired from SW99 pistol. The two others show by way of a scratch, how much of the case is exposed.

The middle picture is the SW99. Note that the resulting bulge is actually larger than the scratch area - possibly indicating early breach opening.

The case on the right is from Glock 23.

 

[Foxbat]

"Foxbat,

Is it possible that the Winchester cases were previously fired in a glock, perhaps even with excessive charges, before they were reloaded and fired again to create the blown-cases? Or, did they blow when they were fired as WW Whitebox loads?

SL1 "

No, they were fired once prior to that. I never had any problems shooting the original WB, regardless of the pistol. The WB load is fairly mild, and cases usually show no signs of any overpressure.

 

[Sarge]

'Chamber support' is not necessarily a constant and is relevant as it relates to specific handguns. The following is posted for reference only.

 

[Farmland]

Here is the photo of the over loaded 40 S & W round that blew in my Beretta. It was operator error and confirmed after pulling the bullets. All 50 rounds were over loaded. I had made a mistake with my scale readings.

The case was never fired through a Glock.

 

[Farmland]

For the full story on my case you can read this thread.

http://www.thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=367060

 

[Scorch]

As others have said, it looks like the case heads were unsupported during firing, causing the ruptures seen. But the cause of the rupture is not just because of the unsupported case head, it looks like the gun was opening under pressure, which you could get if the ammo was loaded with fairly slow powder. Look at the primer in the third picture: it looks like the gun was opening under pressure, which would cause the blown head issues seen in the other three cases also.

The fourth case is simply fatigued brass. Like any metal, brass fatigues when it is worked too much, then it cracks. It happens sometime between the 1st firing and the 101st firing. Happens in all brass cases sooner or later, no matter if they are 9mms, 38s, 357s, 40s, 44s, 45s.

 

[PCJim]

I'm tending to follow Scorch on this one. The cases were definitely without support (pics 1-3), possibly/probably due to the slide not being fully closed. I'd check the gun to see if it will fire with partially open slide. Also check OAL of the reloads to see if excessive OAL could have prevented the slide from closing?