Whats wrong with this brass?

[Leon75x55]

I keep on finding these at my local range and am just curious what can cause this. I still pick them up, re-size them which irons out most of the neck, reload and shoot it through my AK. The firing straightens them out perfectly for next time I reload.

[PatC415]

Stepped chamber from a Saiga???

[Paseclipse]

Definitely shot out of a Saiga and there's a lot of posts in online forums about this.

Did a quick google search and found this post on the AK files forum- http://www.akfiles.com/forums/showthread.php?t=193880

[Leon75x55]

I totally forgot about the Saigas. My first thought was that someone had a home made from a kit AK and did not set the head-space properly. My other thought was that it is a badly cut chamber.

[Paseclipse]

I guess Izhmash added the chamber step a few years ago to distinguish the civilian AK’s from the military. At least that’s my understanding of the reason for it from the little bit of research I did on it a few years ago.

It’s good to hear someone’s reloading brass ran through newer Saigas because I’ve been wondering if it was possible.

[TexasJackKin]

Lugers had an odd step in the chamber, that left the brass looking kind of like that, the idea was it sealed better when fired. I've not seen that on rifle brass, but then I don't reload for an AK.

[Full Clip]

I've reloaded plenty of "Saiga"
Brass. No problem.

[fguffey]

And before that there were smiths and reloaders chambering 308 W chambers to 30/06 without doing the research. The 30/06 reamer will not clean up the 308 W chambers. The shoulder/case body juncture can not be cleaned up with the 30/06 reamer because the diameter of the 308 W is larger in diameter by as much as .014”. A better choice would be the 30/06 Ackley Improved or the 30 Gibbs.

Same thing with the 7mm57, smiths and reloaders chambered the 7mm57 to 280 Remington. The larger neck diameter of the military 7mm57 could not be cleaned up with the 280 reamer, when fired the cases were ejected with two diameter necks. Machine gun barrels have been available for a few years. Smiths and reloaders thought a conversion was easy so they cut the chambers and then found the neck of the fired cases had two diameters.

When the 308 W chambers was cut to 30/06 the ejected case had an artifact of the old chamber in the form of a ring around the case where the shoulder/case body juncture did not clean up.

F. Guffey

[bfoosh006]

BTW... the H&K VP9 also has a "stepped chamber, while not as pronounced as your photo... Lol.

H&K did it to improve accuracy, and frankly, the VP9 is the most accurate out of the box 9x19 handgun I have fired.