Burnside Split Cartridge Case....

[milsurpshooter]

I had a cartridge split today. I am not sure if it was one loaded with a round ball or conical bullet as I didn't notice anything until I got home. My load for both was 30g of 2F Olde Eynsford, topped off with cream of wheat and a greased felt wad and the projecticle hand seated. The brass that split had not been shot before and was the only one of the day to do so (some of the other brass had been shot multiple times). Any suggestions for preventing this in the future?
Thank you in advance!
- milsurpshooter

8460

[Randall]

It might be a chamber size issue. That's really just a guess on my part. If you did a chamber cast it would give you something to compare it to.

[Hal]

That case does not have the concave recess in the bottom. Don't know if that is contributing to your problem, but it certainly won't help your gun any.

[John Holland]

The biggest problem is that the brass cases you have are lathe turned out of bar stock, which is not a "Drawing Grade" of brass. Draw Grade brass will stretch quite a bit before it will fracture. Bar Stock brass will split and not stretch. Way back in the late 1960's and early 1970's the late Jerry Keimer was actually drawing Burnside cartridge cases the same way the originals were made. The tooling wore out, and Jerry passed away. So, now we are stuck with improperly made Burnside cartridge cases. Annealing your brass will help a bit, but it is only a stop-gap in my opinion.

The observation Hal made about the base of the cartridge you show being incorrect and damaging your Burnside is quite correct. You will eventually flatten the Platinum flash hole in the removable section of the breech. The base of your cartridge has to be the same shape as the original. What you have is poor workmanship at best.

[Bruce Cobb 1723V]

John, Was it Jerry who used water pressure to resize 30-06 brass into Burnside? As I remember they did a minimal amount of machining to the base of the case before expanding them.

[John Holland]

Not that I know of. The Keimer cases I have are formed aluminum.

[Carolina Reb]

Back when I started shooting a Burnside, in the early 1980s, I ran into a skirmisher who claimed to have reformed 30-06 cases into Burnsides. Based on that conversation, I made a set of dies, but could never get them to work the way I wanted. All I remember is that he was pretty tall (and I'm 6'1") and he'd probably be about 70 today.

When they fit right, the turned cases last a long time.

The front of the trigger plate extends into the frame cut for the breechblock and pushes the floating chamber (the part with the nipple) forward as the action is opened to extract fired cases. If cases are too short, they don't extract and you can get stuck cases after 5 or 6 shots.