SmallCaliberCentral

I am looking for a little advice/information from some of you that are experts (at least a lot more than I am). Silverfox or Glen or any one else that can address my question. Along with my Savage in 204 I shoot a Ruger Mod 77 in 220 Swift. I bought the gun about 30 years ago and it got almost no use for at least 29 of those years. Last year I got it out and began to compare it to the 204. I had been using a 52 gr. Sierra HPBT with the Sierra accuracy load of 4064. Gun has always shot great and I mean one hole groups at 200 yards. Last week I was shooting at the 200 yard line and three rounds had split necks and one round had total case separation about 1/2 inch from the bottom. I know that 220 Swifts were hard on barrelsl, but this one has not been shot to excess and the load is around 3800 fps, which should not produce barrel erosion (at least that is what I was told). While head space issues could cause case separation, the split neck cases are pretty old and brass does not last forever. I am tempted to throw out all brass and start over, but any comments/advice on the case separation or anything else would be welcome. I will be taking it to the gunsmith, but wondered if anyone had experience in this area. Thanks in advance - berettabob

I'm guessing that the brass got brittle over time, it happens sometimes. If you didn't have any trouble before, when it was "young", that's about all it could be. You might be over-resizing the brass???? too, I rarely if ever run the sizer down all the way to the shellholder, if you do it that way, it can cause headspace issues by oversizing. These are all guesses, though, just to be honest, but I think it's old, tired cases. Depending on how they were stored, they can get brittle over time.


I used to clean the case necks with a solvent soaked rag, until I realized that the solvent had ammonia in it, and that attacks brass, making it brittle, also. I don't do that any more .

thanks a ton Glen, I think I will throw out all brass and start over.