Broken Cases

[Eggman]

Enjoyed Chris De Francisci's article in the "Skirmish Line." To prevent fractures brass cases must be annealed, and then re-annealed about every eight shots or so. Heat the case with a propane torch until it begins to glow red/orange and then immediately quench in water.

[Mike Stein]

And I found with some makes you need to do this with new unfired cases. I got a bulk buy on .45 Colt and had 10%+ failure just trying to load them. Stopped, annealed the rest, life was good again.

[FirinFlatTop]

I have never had a .45colt case fail when new. Loading era, setting up new dies. Have never annealed a single case, I have loaded .45colt cases from mild to wild, black powder to modern powder. 2000 cases or more, load, shoot, clean then do it all over again. I have 500 starline cases I keep aside for Black powder, I have lost more than have split (0).

[Ron/The Old Reb]

Never annealed a case in my life. The only cases that have ever fail for me are 357 mag and 44 mag max loads with a heavy crimp and then only after being reloaded many times..

[John Holland]

What this topic has not taken into consideration is the different types of brass being used. Modern commercial cartridge cases are made from a drawing grade brass, whereas the Maynard, Smith, and Gallager cartridge cases we use are machine turned from solid brass bar stock. The properties between the two are quite different.
JDH

[Mike Stein]

In pistol cartridges, I've loaded everything between .22 Jet through 7mm-08 including a lot of obsolete rounds. Straight wall cases have been .25 ACP through .44 Remington Mag. Twenty plus years ago I got bulk load Remington .45 Colt and these are the ones that split. I made them work by annealing. I switched to Winchester-Western and Federal as I didn't want to fiddle with this. That batch of Remington was the only time I had a high percentage of case splits on new unfired cases. It does happen.

[jonk]

In 15 years of reloading, I have had a number of cases fail at the neck or shoulder (if applicable) and crack lengthwise. The only circular cracks I have had, occasionally resulting in a case head separation, were with military guns (Argentine Mauser and 303 British) with out of SAAMI spec chambers- read, too fat in the web area.

With the mild pressures generated in a Henry or Spencer, I cannot envision ever having a separation, even if the chamber is somewhat generous. Once fireformed to your gun, you should only partially resize, not full length, if possible. Not only will this improve brass life in general, it will lead to less blow by and fouling (and taking a henry's guts apart is a real pain). In short: The article was well written and in principle absolutely true, but for these low pressure guns, the regular annealing is more of an accuracy/anti-fouling move than a case failure prevention move. IMO of course.

[Mike Stein]

In 15 years of reloading, I have had a number of cases fail at the neck or shoulder (if applicable) and crack lengthwise. The only circular cracks I have had, occasionally resulting in a case head separation, were with military guns (Argentine Mauser and 303 British) with out of SAAMI spec chambers- read, too fat in the web area.

With the mild pressures generated in a Henry or Spencer, I cannot envision ever having a separation, even if the chamber is somewhat generous. Once fireformed to your gun, you should only partially resize, not full length, if possible. Not only will this improve brass life in general, it will lead to less blow by and fouling (and taking a henry's guts apart is a real pain). In short: The article was well written and in principle absolutely true, but for these low pressure guns, the regular annealing is more of an accuracy/anti-fouling move than a case failure prevention move. IMO of course.

I do this on necked cases, particularly if I'm dedicating cases to a particular rifle. One of my Ruger 77 22.250 has a long throat. I let the case grow and then set the bullet a half turn from rifling engagement minimizing jump which consistently deliveres sub-minute accuracy from the factory barrel. The finished length means I can no longer magazine feed. I have to recut to length after every third firing. I don't follow this if feeding is a requirement.
.30-.30 tend to have weak shoulders so I'll do a partial neck resize with taper crimp only to seize the bullet so it wont move during recoil in the tubular magazine. Other cartridges that seat from the rim, straight wall with have enough wall thickness I wont resize but will finish with a roll crimp such as the .45 Colt, .32 S&W, .38S&W, .38 Special, .44 Russian and .44 Special. Notice Magnum is missing.
These are advantages for a reloader but these are also reasons to be careful using someone else's reloads as you don't know the criteria behind the load.