is this a problem? aparently not. Update in OP

I am talking about the hour glass ring above the shoulder.



Loaded round is a 300 Blackout
110 grain Hornady V-MAX
19.3g H110
re manufactured brass from .223.

seated depth is 2.088

would this be safe to shoot?

UPDATE:

went to the range and fired approximately 80 of theses bad boys. no problems cycling, accuracy was under 1" at 25 yards, all cases fire formed as normal.

here is the one anomaly.

I had two dud primers. when I tried to cycle the bolt manually the fresh round was stuck in there good. I had to mortar the gun to get the round to eject. ok so the round was a bit on the odd shape so I figured that could be it.

I get home, clean all the cases re-size the neck and I load a bullet only, no primer , no powder in four rounds. I check cycling, three cycle fine smooth and easy, one round consistently is tight and I again have to mortar the round out..I put the calipers to it and it checks the same as the rounds that cycle fine.

my best guess was the neck wall may be too thick and its a bit tight in the chamber?

Seems like it would be ok once you shoot it it will fire form better but don't listen to me just an educated guess

I don't have any experience with that specific round... do newly formed pieces of brass need to be fire-formed in general? I know whan I load .30HRT rounds, the initial loads must be fire-formed.

Does it chamber ok?

Looks like the case buckled. Did it look like that before loading the bullet in? Do you have other rounds that look like this, or is it an outlier? Might be a problem with die adjustment. I'm not getting brass that looks like that out of either of my die sets.

case did not buckle that I know of. but that's a good assumption. I cleaned out the die and I had brass rings shaving from the case mouth in there, but the round seated to the correct depth but ti was a little harder to seat than on bullets that were easier to seat and did not have the odd ring.

to me it looks like the reformed case mouth is slightly under sized and the bullet forces it wider as far as the bullet is seated in the case.

I did not make the brass.

Did the brass look like that before pressing the bullet in? Sounds like the seater die might be adjusted in too far - you might try backing off the die, then adjusting the seater plug down to compensate.

I'll look at that.

the brass did not look like that to start with, it has the typical case /shoulder/ mouth I'll try to get some more pics up later. off to work now.

haven't chambered one yet, upper is at the smith getting work done. I'll have it back tomorrow.

Commercial or GI brass? Looks like the neck is a little thick and could use inside reaming.

Did you FL size the brass before loading?

I had the same problem with some 300 BLK brass, "Brads Warehouse" great brass btw.. mine needed FL sizing first.

I would shoot that if it fit in my case guage.

Have you MEASURED your bullet diameter? Now I could be wrong, but it looks to me like that bullet is too big in diameter.


OR, there's a problem in your sizing die.

That Coke bottle shape isn't normal.

Depending on who made the brass, it is possible that there has not been an expander ball run through the neck.

Additionally, it looks like there's some deformation of the case mouth - which would lead me to think the seating die isn't adjusted properly.

but is it safe to shoot?

now with poll.

Looks like the brass was trimmed on a dillon trimmer and then loaded prior to opening up the neck.
Should fire fine and I don't think you'll need a crimp on those rounds.

What barrel do you have?

Looks to me like either your neck is too small (wrong expander) or you're trying to shove an 8mm bullet in a .30 cal casing!

EDIT: Did you crimp these?

Noveske

no crimp.

it's a .30 cal bullet, Hornady 110 V-max

I didn't make the brass, sounds like the guy that made it didn't do it properly.

The head to datum/shoulder length needs to be long enough to support the cartridge when the firing pin strikes. If to short, you will have misfires. To long and reloads will not chamber. The hour glass will blow out and fire form to the chamber. Check your head to shoulder measurements against the drawing. SAAMI

The reason I ask is I'm wondering if the brass was too long and the crimp operation pushed it down. Does that make any sense?

I am betting the brass was made on a RT1200 with a brads warehouse or CH4D trim die.
These dies hold the brass at the neck and usually undersize the neck area.
I had the same issue with the short 110 bullets when I loaded them but they formed perfectly when fired.
A longer bullet will open the entire neck up so you don't have that "hour glass" or "wasp waist" look.

If you want you could neck size the brass and it will open the neck up to the correct dimension.

chambers fine.

off to go shoot.

Have you MEASURED the bullet? Most people would expect 30 cal bullets to be in a 30 caliber box, but once in a while something might happen and the product isn't properly labeled, it happens. If you haven't done it yet, put a caliper on those bullets and confirm the diameter, rather than just assume.

That's no good, the headspace is screwed up.

Back the seater die out so the crimp ring doesn't contact the case mouth. If you want a crimp, add it in a separate step after seating the bullets.

the case is not crushed, the round is pushing the neck wall out. bullet measures .308

Do you have a 300 BLK case gauge??
It does look a little funny...

What do the fired cases measure against the unfired cases from the purchased batch.
Take some pictures of the fired cases, and then size/load them and see what they look like.
I doubt you'll have that initial problem again since its caused by trimming the brass and then not expanding the neck.

Good guess, check neck diameter of a loaded round. Then compare to fired neck diameter. Should be about .002" larger than the loaded rounds. Will a bullet drop into a fired case mouth? Not always a good test, as light loads may not expand the neck on firing.

Like west467 said last: Case gauge.

I'd like to see a pic of how it fit in a case gauge.

I just made some 300 blackout cases out of Lake City 556 brass and didn't have any issues. I've not tried to resize the 223 brass but all the research I've found suggested using 556 brass because of the thicker case wall. Not sure if that has anything to do with the hour glass brass.

You'll hunt for a long time to find 5.56X45 brass that is thicker than anything but PMP.

Anyway, I suspect thick cases are suspect in this example. The case is slight thicker than the original neck, and forming a new shoulder and neck increases that basic thickness. I wonder if there is a donut in the cases in the first post. ...

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