Henry Rifle Forums

This is a first for me. Anyone seen this before? Know the cause?
I reloaded 50 7mm-08 Remington rounds with 45.0 gn of IMR 4350 with a Nosler 120 gr BT (not a hot load). I fired 14 rounds no problem, and then when I fired and extracted that 15th round, only the rear part of the case came out. The remaining half of the case was still in the chamber. The bullet had been sent along OK. As a matter of fact, it hit only about an inch from the rest of the group.
I put my bore scope along the barrel and into the chamber, and don't see anything whacked. I inspected all my cases both fired and unfired and they look fine, no cracks or marks anywhere. The case is a popular brand and not cheap. I plan to call and ask them what they think.

I used to get a few cases like that with my Henry .327 Federal mag even with new factory loads. I figured out there was a headspace problem and sent it back to Henry. They put a new barrel on it and that seemed to have fixed the problem. The only downside is the new barrel is not as accurate as the original. I regret sending it back, but I guess for the issue of safety it was the right thing to do. It it's just one of a couple of hundred I wouldn't worry about it but more often than that I'd get it checked by a gunsmith.
Jake

fascinating .... I've been loading ammo since the mid '60's and have seen a good many split cases .... however, I've never seen one come apart like the one in your picture .... looking forward to hearing what you find out

It might have just been a defective case, but if it happens again, I'd have a gunsmith check it out. I've had a 45 Colt Starline case split on the second loading. That was one from a group of 500 cases. No problem with there rest and they are now on their 4th reload.

Paul

Thanks for the replies.
The case manufacturer replied within two hours to my email. Here's the statement:"This appears to be a weak spot in the case that separated during firing. Could have been caused by several things but more than likely it is from a thin spot after the second draw when producing the case and it weakened during the first firing and then failed."

They responded within a couple of hours which I appreciate. I've fired 386 rounds so far through this rifle since I got it a short while ago, and since I found no anomalies in the chamber with the bore scope, and that all the spent and full cases look fine, I'll continue to fire this lot. The last thing is to inspect each of the empty cases before I reload. If anything looks weird, I'll take further steps, as is the common-sense consensus.

I have seen only 1 split bottleneck case and it was one of my .30-06 reloads fired through my '03 Springfield (1918 mfg.). I had f/l re-sized the case 11 times. The case was charged with 46 grs. of AA 2520 below a 165 gr. Hornady Interlock BTSP bullet. The split was at the bottom of the case wall at the spot where the re-sizing die reaches on its downward thrust. At the time, I assumed that 11 re-sizes had simply stretched the brass too thin. I now toss .30-06 brass after 8 f/l sizings (5 for M1 brass). Since the split case experience, I have fired nearly 500 reloads through the '03 with no more splits.

Good point Pitchman. Like most, I keep track of case loadings and should have mentioned that this was only the second loading of this case (as is the rest of this lot).