anyone ever had this happen???

[bhilliker@comcast.net]

Tikka T3 Ace Target. 27 grns BLC2 under a 55 grain bullet. Wild card is its range brass. Not sure where the bottom half went

[ar15barrels]

I have had lots of those.
That's classic case failure from cases being reloaded too many times.
The back half of the case ejected out of the gun.
Did you have to pull the front half out of the chamber or did it fall out on it's own?



What commonly happens is that you eject the back portion of the case and the front portion stays in the chamber until you shove another live round into the chamber at which point you have a stoppage because the piece of case won't let the bolt close with another live round behind it.
So then you extract the unfired case and the front half of the broken case is stuck to the unfired round.

[bhilliker@comcast.net]

Went to chamber a round and it didn't go in---ejected that. Ran a squib rod down the barrel--nothing. Tried chambering again and still an issue. Stood the rifle up and the piece fell out. Perils of range brass. I'm a 100-yard paper puncher. Guess if I want to start reaching out, I really need to change my process for brass collection and prep. And yes--I case gauge every round. Once fired police range brass is the route I might switch to.

[mofo1111]

Yep. Had one recently. It was range pick up brass. But I also started to investigate other reasons. In my case, I may have been pushing the shoulder back too far on some cases, and the brass has too much room to expand upon firing. This may not be an issue for new brass or factory ammo but reloaded cases get worked quite a bit more. If the brass stretches too far, it over works the brass. I measured the shoulder of a fired case in that rifle and pushed the shoulder back 0.002". You may want to push the shoulder back 0.003" in a gas gun. You'll need some sort of gauge to measure the shoulder distance. There are different variations and ways to measure. You may also look into annealing your brass if you want to get more life out of your brass and more consistent neck tension.

[bhilliker@comcast.net]

Thank you

[ar15robert]

Have had a few over the years. Usually brass loaded too many times.

I have found anealing helps.