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Attachment 37498Attachment 37499Had some quality range time with my Krag today for the first time. She is a fine rifle with tight groups, smooth bolt action and a sweet trigger. I bought some new Remington 30-40 rounds and they had no case splitting. I also bought some 1930 army 220 grain antique ammo. The antique rounds all fired well but couple had the small case split shown in the picture. Is it just the age of the ammo or poor quality brass? Thanks
It's just something about older brass, they tend to crack like that. You can anneal old brass and get round that but I don't think it's worth it for Krag brass. You can still get it. Don't worry about it.
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Originally Posted by NRA
Quote:
Originally Posted by NRA
Partially just the age of the brass. Can also be the result of mercury in primers. I have a very old case (Gras caliber for Vickers MG) that developed a neck split just sitting in the drawer, although it had been de-activated. Be glad that your antiques even fired! Athough over here, I suspect that those boxes would be worth more as decorative collectors items than the cartridges themselves.
The bad part is that splits of that nature can damage the chamber via gas cutting, so continued use may make for hard extraction. BTW, don't forget to use water or water based solvent during bore cleaning. Rounds that old are almost invariably corrosive primed.
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Originally Posted by Patrick Chadwick
Yes i think you are correct, they are worth more as a collectors. But the devil made me do it. I just had to fire off some vintage 220 grain ammo.
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The chamber is what also concerns meQuote:
Originally Posted by jmoore
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my badQuote:
Originally Posted by jmoore
A friend of mine, who I reload for, had an 1898 rifle with a bad spot in the chamber that's in the same place as your splits. A rough area that could have been caused by the same type of case failure, other folks over the years shooting old ammo they'd found. We rechambered it to an Ackley Improved to clean up the chamber, now I have to work on the side plate to get them to feed. I'm beginning to see that Krag barrel steel is somewhat soft, I recently ringed the neck area of the chamber on one of mine by using filler in a cast bullet load, and I've read a multitude of posts mentioning ringing in said barrels. Mine isn't too bad, it doesn't interfere with extraction yet. I think I'll be replacing it with a Criterion chrome moly barrel at some point in the future.
Years ago I fired some old 30 Army ammo, and some of the cases split horizontaly near the head, I read somewhere it was due to the powder caking and exploding rather than burning.