Use brass. Lesson learned.

[Wildshot]

The passed couple of months I have been buying fired brass at the gun shows. I put them through the tumbler, then inspect each one for damage and discard unacceptable ones. I have over 800 rounds. Went to the range on Sunday with 3 revolvers. 2 357’s and 1 .22. I had a FTF on my S&W 686. I inspected the cartridge and found that the primer was unmarked. The primer was even with the back surface of the rim. I compared it to a few of the other cartridges and could see that the rim thickness was visibly thinner, enough to keep the firing pin from striking the primer. It is a Winchester 38SPL. When compared to the other Winchester rounds, this one ended up being the only one with the thin rim. Weird.
Later I had the 686 jam on me. I had just loaded the gun and fired 2 shots and it jammed. The trigger could not be pulled and I could not cock the hammer. Also the cylinder would not open. When I got home, close inspection showed that there was a bullet in the barrel but just barely. It was caught between the barrel and the cylinder. I inserted a hard plastic rod that is a good fit to the barrel, and tapped it with a leather mallet. Nothing. Tapped it a second time and the bullet went back into the brass. A close look at the cartridge showed a small crack at the base. Just enough presser was lost to unseat the bullet and jam the gun. The 686 is undamaged and I am feeling a lot better about that. This has shown me I need to expand my inspection criteria.

 

[Scharfschuetzer]

Cracked cases

Interesting location of the crack. Glad that there was no damage to your pistol.

Like most revolver reloaders, most of my cracked revolver cases are all at the lip of the case, no doubt from work hardened brass from numerous crimping cycles.

Sometimes I'll get a mid-body (lenthwise) crack in my 32/20 case in my old Hand Ejector Smith & Wesson. I think that's just due to thin brass and no fault of the pistol or loading process. I generally only neck size the cases and I don't load hot for the revolver in deference to its age, but they crack anyway. Same for my 32/20 rifle.

 

[Jim243]

This has shown me I need to expand my inspection criteria.

Yep, good thing all's well. You didn's say how you were reloading. That squib (stuck bullet) could have been from a case without powder. I would weigh all your other loaded rounds and see if any are 3 or more gains lighter than the rest. Or you could just pull them all apart and start over on reloading them.

Just a thought.
Stay safe.
Jim

 

[F. Guffey]

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The passed couple of months I have been buying fired brass at the gun shows. I put them through the tumbler, then inspect each one for damage and discard unacceptable ones. I have over 800 rounds. Went to the range on Sunday with 3 revolvers. 2 357’s and 1 .22. I had a FTF on my S&W 686. I inspected the cartridge and found that the primer was unmarked. The primer was even with the back surface of the rim. I compared it to a few of the other cartridges and could see that the rim thickness was visibly thinner, enough to keep the firing pin from striking the primer. It is a Winchester 38SPL. When compared to the other Winchester rounds, this one ended up being the only one with the thin rim. Weird.
Later I had the 686 jam on me. I had just loaded the gun and fired 2 shots and it jammed. The trigger could not be pulled and I could not cock the hammer. Also the cylinder would not open. When I got home, close inspection showed that there was a bullet in the barrel but just barely. It was caught between the barrel and the cylinder. I inserted a hard plastic rod that is a good fit to the barrel, and tapped it with a leather mallet. Nothing. Tapped it a second time and the bullet went back into the brass. A close look at the cartridge showed a small crack at the base. Just enough presser was lost to unseat the bullet and jam the gun. The 686 is undamaged and I am feeling a lot better about that. This has shown me I need to expand my inspection criteria.

__________________

You taped it twice, the first attempt did not work, ????? The bullet slid out of the case, it slid out of the cylinder and then into the forcing cone, and Old Bob K. and I were at the range, the shooter with the model 66 was doing everything he could do to pull the trigger, rotate the cylinder and open the cylinder. We put everything we had on the benches up, stopped shooting and and got involved, nothing like good guy/bad guy but he took delivery of his New Dillon 550B three days prior to his trip to the range. He did not take us serious, after driving the bullet back into the case, he proceeded to ‘load-er up again’, I offered to loan him scales, we offered him all the ammo he could shoot, we offered to load up and follow him to his house to help him with his reloading, anyhow we explained to him we could not afford to continue shooting next to him if he had no way of verifying the powder that did not get into his last case fired got into the next case loaded as in a double charge. And we explained to him had he managed to pull the trigger, rotate the cylinder and fire another round he would have destroyed his S&W Model 66, I suppose the thing that upset him the most happened when we explained to him we were not compulsive laughers, like the ones that watch Americas Funniest Videos, we explained to him everything that goes wrong is not funny.

F. Guffey

 

[serf 'rett]

Guffy, now I am really confused.

Was your story about an encounter with the opening post author?

 

[jr05]

How are your crimps on these rounds? No issues with bullet movement on the rounds in the cylinder during recoil? Primer seating good and even with all primers in the lot fully seated? Powder variation?

Though the case crack may be the root cause of this issue, I would question if there are other things going on here...

Also, how did the round fire just before the jam? No sound difference or concerns? If it did I would assume you would have not attempted to pull the trigger again without inspection first!

 

[Wildshot]

The round that FTF. I pulled the bullet and dumped and weighed the powder. It was exactly what I recorded putting in. The primer was unmarked. The firing pin never struck it. Primer was even with back of rim. I measured the brass and compared it to several others and against the specs. The specs say that the rim thickness should be .058. I measured the offending piece at .043. I inspected the rest of my ammo and it appears this is the only case I have with this problem.

The cartridge that jammed my revolver. The round just before the jam, fired normally as did the round that jammed the gun. Since I knocked the bullet back into the case to clear the jam, I pulled the bullet and put the brass in the tumbler since it was black over 2/3's of the outside. Now with a clean case it was easy to see the crack at the base. It is right at the rim line and covered about a quarter of the circumference. Since the recoil was normal and the bullet barely made it into the barrel, I believe there was not a double drop on the powder.

I put a couple hundred rounds through the gun that day before the problems came up. I went to the range today to check out some of my reloads and the S&W 686. 200 rounds without a hitch. Revolver performed flawlessly.