ORIGINAL: Pioneer2
Today my son shot a porcupine with his Sav 340/.222 and the fired case came out of the chamber in two pieces?This was a mild load 19gr RE7 in once fired Sako brass with standard primers/50gr HP.I don't think the gun has headspace problems but this is rather puzzling?I got almost 500 of this once fired brass in old blue and red Sako metric boxes along with a pre-vixen Sako years ago.Collecters may know the model but it's a mini-mauser action that takes the old Sako rings.Not sure if the old brass is just brittle or what? I have 100 virgin Win .222 brass that I'll try and see what happens.Any ideas? Thanx Harold
I don't think this was caused by brittle brass, but that may have contributed to the problem. Sounds like somewhere along the line, this case got fired in an oversized chamber, and stretched just ahead of the web causing the brass to thin out. Then it was resized. If it had been a little brittle just ahead of the web, and thin too, that could account for what happened. The Savage 340 only had one lug, and is no doubt somewhat springy, like a SMLE. This adds further to complicating the situation. You need to check out the rest of that brass to see if it has incipient head separation starting. Annealing those cases will NOT help, because you cannot annealcases that close to the head - soft webswould just make things alotworse!