Imminent case failure?

[Dave A]

I was getting ready to reload some .223 brass a few days ago and after depriming and resizing, noticed some issues with some Lake City brass. There appears to be a crack, or a defect right at the angle as the case transitions to the shoulder.

Should I throw this brass away, or is this nothing to really worry about? I looked at a lot of other brass from various mfgs and did not see this problem on any of it.

[BigBronco]

If in doubt at all take the safe choice. Toss it. Is a previously fired piece of brass worth a rifle failure?

[sequoia_nomad]

How many are like that? Can you feel a definite crack or groove when you run your fingernail over it? That is not normally where a case would fail.

[Fjold]

It's a rub mark because the brass is a little wide at the shoulders or your chamber is a little tight. If it's reloaded ammunition then theck the seating die adjustment, if the die is set to low it will hit the case mouth as the bullet seats and bulge the shoulder right where the shiny ring is on your brass.

[Dave A]

In answer to the first question about whether I can feel it with a fingernail, the answer is yes. The line you can see in the photo is below the surface.

I agree that is not where you usually see a failure, but when I asked a long time re-loader neighbor, he had never seen one like that, so I posted the question. If you want more photos, can do.

This is one of those situations where I am not sure what happened. I had accumulated a batch of brass over a few weeks. Some I had shot and some I picked up at the range. About midway through the depriming I managed to stick a case in the die.

I got the case out, but found some scratches in the die. Since I had a spare, I set it up and continued on with the operation. It was not until I was trimming for length that I noticed about 60 of the 140 cases had this defect to some degree. As it turned out, almost all of them were Lake City. There is some suspicion that the problem is with the resizing setup, so I backed it off about 1/8 turn. Will be out shooting this next week and will run some through the die to see what happens then, but I appreciate all comments.

[sequoia_nomad]

It's always a good idea to keep your own brass separated from range-find brass, until you have sorted it and looked the found brass over. What kind of cases were you shooting? Possible the LCs were all found brass that someone else loaded?

[Dave A]

I decided to cut apart one of the cases as another poster had done. I don't see anything inside the case that indicates a problem. May try shooting one to see what happens????

[OpenSightsOnly]

Have used a straightened-out paper clip as my "feeler gauge."