1) How do I increase brass life to avoid encountering this problem for a few extra loadings in the future?
I earned my Distinguished with an M1a. The M1a and Garand are extremely hard on brass. Experienced shooters recommended to me that I only take a case four or five reloads, which is about 5 to 6 firings, and discard the cases. I would be shown their cases, I would take them home, section them, and find that their cases had severe case head stretch.
That is until I met a Distinguished HM who was shooting lubricated cases in his M1a. He left the RCBS case lube on his cases, never tumbled or cleaned them, and he said he could take a set of brass all shooting season. Like others I had read Hatcher’s Notebook and it warnings about greased bullets and of course heard all the doom about oil/grease on cases but here was something that was clearly working out differently from the predictions of the authority figures. In time I determined that the Distinguished HM was 100% correct, and the greased bullet warnings were not only baseless, it was an Army cover up for the defects of the 1,000,000 low number Springfields built in Army Arsenals.
Cost is an important consideration to me. There are those to whom case life and case cost are irrelevant, but few people got to retire with footlockers of free military brass. I have noticed that new “bargain” 308 Win is priced $22.00 for twenty rounds, so brass has become even more expensive over the years. While I cannot speak for others, but for me, saving money is important: the cost of replacing cases after five firings is significant, especially if you are shooting an M1a for years to earn the Distinguished Rifleman’s Badge . Being able to take a set of brass 10 or even 20 times results in considerable cost savings over the alternative of tossing the brass after five firings.
Brass life in a bolt rifle can be orders of magnitude higher than what a gas gunner can expect. Bolt rifles are easy on brass, less scratches and dents, and the brass is not stretched on extraction because the bolt is opened after chamber pressure is zero. When bolt gunners do get case head separations it is due to setting the shoulder too far back on sizing. Cases are really meant to stretch once, on the average, 0.005”. If cases stretch more than that depending on a number of variables, brass hardness being a primary factor, cases will break due to case head separation. These are cases fired in my M1a and fired as lubricated rounds. I either left the RCBS case lube on them and primed them that way, or I put on Johnson paste wax on the loaded cases with my fingers. I don’t like the feel of greasy cases and if I had time between matches I would wash the cases to remove the RCBS lube and then apply paste wax. . If I did not have time I fired the cases just as they came out of the die, minus whatever lube that was lost in handling. I never had a primer dud. I ran a number of experiments with various lubes; leaving thick coatings of grease is objectionable as grease particles are in the air after firing. I had 1000 rounds of CAVIM and I fired most of them in a FAL. FAL’s are very hard on brass and I experimented with stick wax. This is a tenuous grease used to lubricate saw teeth. I dropped lumps of stick wax in a bag with handfuls of CAVIM and shook vigorously. Both case and bullets were unevenly coated with globs of stick wax. When I fired this stuff it was as if a grease bomb went off: the mechanism and myself became coated in stick wax. My shooting glasses had to be frequently cleaned, my hands were greasy, my clothes were greasy, overall, it was messy. Later I spent hours wiping the cases to reduce the amount of stick wax.
So, I prefer thin coatings and after all the handling that occurs after sizing, after trimming, after priming, after dumping the powder and seating the bullet, the amount of RCBS case lube left does not leave objectionable residue in the mechanism or eyeglasses.
At Camp Perry in cold weather I had bolt over rides with some of my Johnson paste waxed rounds. This ended when I polished the rounds. Pervious to that I shot the rounds with swirls and gobs of paste wax but evidentially that caused sluggish round rise in the magazine in cold weather. From then on I polished my rapid fire rounds and have never had a bolt close on an empty chamber even in rapid fires sequences in snow.
I have tried various lubes, paste wax takes the most time to apply but is the most satisfactory for handling. Paste wax dries hard, it is easy to wipe off dirt if you drop a round, and it is cheap.
I tried wire pulling wax, bought a bottle at Home Depot, works but not as hard as paste wax.
http://www.shop3m.com/wire-pulling-lubricant-wax.html
Sometimes I left Kiwi Mink Oil on the cases.
The picture below are of sectioned cases, R stands for reloaded, R5 five times reloaded, etc, all of these cases the shoulder was set back about 0.003” and the cases fired in my M1a. I do not visually see any evidence of case wall thinning from those cases reloaded 5 times (6 times fired) , R18, or R22. As long as the case is not excessively stretched during firing or extraction, there is no reason for the sidewalls to thin.
The FAL cases are from a Bud’s rifle. I think they were separating after 2 or 3 three firings, FAL’s are hard on brass.
My basic conclusion is that if the brass does not failure through case neck cracks, body splits, and you have not stretched them so they develop case head separations, you can load them until the primer pockets get too large , which is why I stopped reloading these cases.
I found that I needed to periodically ream the primer pockets: the pockets became shallow. Don’t know why unless the primer pocket collapses over time. As incidental contact with the primer can cause a slamfire or an out of battery slamfire, keeping the primer below the case head is a safety critical issue.
I believe that lubricated cases will produce more consistent accuracy than dry cases. Chambers foul and they foul unevenly. I am of the opinion that irregular binding occurs when cases adhere to the chamber. I am also of the opinion that all semi automatic mechanisms function smoother if there is no case to chamber friction. As case friction changes as the chamber fouls bolt load changes, unlock velocities change, and this may have an effect on the dynamics of the weapon. Lubricated cases evenly transfer the thrust to the locking mechanism. HK used to make a statement to the effect on their web page for their roller bolt rifles. While the M1a has been developed to a accurate service rifle, I believe any inaccuracy due to case friction is in the noise level for this mechanism.
I can say I earned my Distinguished and won a regional gold with lubricated cases in the M1A, so my accuracy and function with lubricated cases was more than acceptable.
