.303 Ball, South African

[lawrence_n]

CATASTROPHIC FAILURES!! One of the guys who bought that SA ball ammo contacted me and showed me pics of the fired brass. What a mess!! There's a bunch of FTF's and brass that is falling apart with huge flame-cut splitting, base separations, and assorted other defects. Bottom line, it's not safe to fire. I'm going to take it back. Since he needs ammo, I'll pull the projectiles out of the reject rounds and if they look good, I'll reload them into good brass with good powder and primers and replace the defective ones on a 1-for-1. From the looks of the brass, I think the rounds were in some sort of corrosive atmosphere that degraded the metal. The guy I got them off said he'd tumble cleaned the ammo and I'd read somewhere that tumbling loaded ammo can cause changes in the powder characteristics. Neither my brother nor I have ever seen that kind of disintegration of quality brass. I have a lot of IVI and DIZ brass primed and ready to go so I just have to make sure the actual bullets are OK and I'll use them.

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[browningautorifle]

stored under suspicious circumstances.

CATASTROPHIC FAILURES!!

Agreed, sounds like ammo that was maybe stored under high heat and in sunlight...? The heat and cool factor will break ammo down very quickly, thus the directions given on storage and protection. Maybe Bombdoc can shed some light here?