Cracked 243 necks

MHWASH

WKR
Joined
Aug 21, 2016
Messages
910
Location
S.E.WA
I’ve loaded for this 243 for several years, but haven’t shot it a lot. Last year I shot it quite a bit after having it threaded for my suppressor. I’ve always had trouble with split necks, but I just assumed it was old brass. Last year I bought some Win brass that was supposedly once fired. I believe this is true because it was in the factory ammo boxes. After shooting several rounds today, I noticed 2/3 of the brass has split necks. Could this be a rifle issue? Using RCBS dies.
 

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Go spend $25 on some federal blue box whatevers and see whats up. I'm betting that that brass is just used up
 
That’s Winchester brass for ya. Junk like stated above. Get some Lapua, and you will wear out your barrel before the brass.
 
Another vote for Winchester brass being garbage I had the same problem plenty of times with it.
 
I’ve got 4th fired federal brass that looks better than that and I think federal brass sucks lol
 
Has the brass ever been annealed? I have a 243 as well and Winchester brass with 2-3 firings and zero split necks. still seems odd to have that many split necks in such a small batch.
 
I have never been a fan of Winchester brass... I would highly recommend annealing the brass as soon as you get it. That should help. I have had factory loaded stuff come out with split necks before... so sometimes its just the luck of the draw.
 
I bought a box of Federal 100gr ammo. Shot all 20 rounds with no issues. I then loaded up 5 pieces and shot them again. Still no issues. This weekend I’ll load those same 5 and shoot them again.
 
MHwash, I got a box of .243 Win. cases for free. They have about 5 rounds through them and not one bad one. Perhaps , they use their best cases for factory ammo. I imagine there would be some upset factory ammo buyers if they saw a split neck straight out of the box.
 
Win brass is very uninformed in neck. Thin spots and it will split. I have a 250 sav I reload for and all I can find usually is win brass. I just go thru them a look. You can see the ones that our really thin in a spot. I throw them out. The rest will usually work okay for 10 reloads or so. Out of 50 usually I have to throw 8-10 away.
 
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