Case ruptures anyone? (glock 20, witness compact)

[bnolsen]

Just wondering how many of you have had case ruptures.

My first rupture was in the late 1990s with a gen2 glock 20 (bought 1996 for 470usd new) at a firing range where I had bought some of their ammo.  That one sheared the mag catch and blew the mag out the bottom.   Thankfully just the mag catch needed replacing.

I also have compact and full sized tanfoglio eaa witness pistols full steel in wonder finish, I believe 2003 and 2004.  No problems with the full sized one.  Both sporting 22# wolff springs.

I have a 40 barrel in the witness compact and have been having reliability issues with it.  I bought henning guide rods for both pistols.  A couple of weeks ago, just to test I stuck the 10mm barrel back into the compact.  During the first mag I had a case rupture.  This time it blew out the polycarbonate mag floor plate.  Primer strikes were off center so there's a good chance the henning was interfering with stripping and fully feeding the rounds.  It seems that changing out the 40 ammo fixed the compact's issues.

case on left is from the witness compact, case on right from glock 20.

I notice the cases are silver on these...not sure if that's an important data point...


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[The_Shadow]

Where these factor loads?  If not what was the loading data used?

That's very low on the casing, almost like a defective stamping!

[cphills]

I have never had a ruptured 10mm case. Delta Elite, G20 and Kimber eclipse custom. I'm not loading to the high end and I don't practice with hunting loads.

[sqlbullet]

Not in 10mm.

I had a 5.56 let go that was loaded with some WC846.  Needed a new extractor, and charging handle by the time I got it beaten open.

Had some 358 Winchesters that blew primers when working off book for a heavy for caliber bullet load in that gun.

Never had any issues in any gun with factory ammo. 

You don't mention the ammo source.

If you were using factory ammo, please post details including the lot numbers.

If handloads, lets see the data.

[bnolsen]

I don't recall who loaded the ammo that was in the glock.  I think it might have been reloads done in wyoming.  Those 2 bullets were all I had left from whenever that happened in late 1990s.

The compact witness load that went was from ammovalley.  All the ammo I fired through the full sized frame and the glock 20 worked fine.  As I mentioned I was testing the compact with a henning rod.  After the case rupture I inspected every case that went through the compact and all of them showed off center primer hits similar to what you see in the picture.

I would probably attribute both case ruptures to the cartriges not fully seating in the barrel.  Inspecting the witness barrels the cartridge when seated is very well supported on the top and sides with just a little brass showing on the feed ramp side.  Better support than the ruger 10mm (reference the recent youtube video comparing chamber support of various 1911 style barrels).

Let me check..

witness case len: hair under 25mm
glock case len: right at 25mm

so cases seem to be in spec...

also both those old unfired sample cartridges very easily slide into and out of the barrel chamber.

And yes, both sets of ammo (old and new) were noticeably hotter than the factory rounds I've fired before (mostly weak assed american eagle).  This new batch not as hot as that old batch I think (lots of years ago though).

And I've never had case ruptures before with anything else, even when I reloaded 45 acp HOT (I reloaded a whole bunch just under max).

[cgreth]

I had a scary case rupture (kaboom) using my Glock 17 9mm.   Entirely my fault.   A cartridge had received a double or nearly double charge while loading. 

Fireball came out the back of the Glock, blew the magazine out the bottom of the pistol.   No one got hurt (me) and nothing was broken on the Glock.

It peeled the brass about 3/4 of the way around, right at the extractor groove.

[The_Shadow]

bnolsen, I wish you had a couple of those left, We could do a pull-down documentation to see what was used that created the issues.

BTW, my only case rupture was a small 380ACP as tested from a Ruger LCP 380.  It was my fault trying to develop a load for a bullet that was too long and heavy (125 grain cast Hollow Point based off a 147 grain) in these small cartridge cases.  Also the fact that the first cartridge fired without any mishap (1037 fps) other than I couldn't find the fired casing (PPU by the way).  So not being able to locate that brass to study, I pulled the trigger on the second cartridge (MFS) (1038 fps) which resulted in a casing blowout.  The MFS brass upon further investigation was found to have a recessed section surrounding the primer pocket area, I attribute this to a lack of casing support from within.  The gases blew down the feed ramp, blowing the aftermarket magazine guts out, leaving some soot marks on my hand at every opening to include the trigger area.  It was later that I actually found the spent PPU brass on the 15 yd line, I was shooting on the 7 yd line and it had a significant bulge!
After I brought the gun home, further inspection revealed a small hairline crack at the upper right of the polymer frame.
BTW Ruger replaced the polymer frame free of charge...

[Grumpy7159]

Glock 20, fifth round ever shot from firearm. Blew the magazine out the bottom and left a burn on my trigger finger. Only damage was to the lips of the magazine. The ammo was new and of the nickel casing type. It was a 180 grain full load (not subsonic). I fired the rest of the box without incident. I have since replaced the OEM barrel with a KKM barrel and everything works great. No Glock smiles, but I still resize with a Redding die.

[Geeman]

I had a full case head separation in a Glock 20 (Gen4) running warm pistol power loads with mixed head stamp brass.  The case was PPU and based on other reports, I believe the brass was too springy to maintain it sizing tension and the bullet set back and lead to a kaboom.

Blew the mag out the bottom, never did find the extractor, cracked the frame in a few places, and I learned about the lessening margin of safety as you work toward maximum loads.  I was running a full half grain heavier loading without pressure signs prior to dropping back it back off.  It was hot, though.  Too hot to take a bullet setback.

I'm just glad it was in my hand, because I let someone else shoot the same loads half an hour earlier.  There is something about the concussion from hot power pistol loads that make it a blast to shoot.

Greg

[cgreth]

Had been reloading .45 acp for years and years.   You see where this is heading don't you?     

First year I started reloading 10mm, I switched out ammo bags for the range and there must have been a 10mm stuck in the bag from a previous range trip when I loaded it for .45 acp that day.

Needless to say while shooting my SIG P220 .45 acp one day I loaded the magazine with a 10mm round.   Let me tell you, the round will load in the magazine and it will chamber and it will shoot.

Luckily for me, I was in the early stages of 10mm reloading and round development and it was a very mild 10mm that this happened with.  180gr fp with 6.0 gr Power Pistol - VERY accurate round by the way for 10mm.

It will not extract.   The round happened to be a nickel case.   The whole case expanded to fit the .45 acp chamber.   The case had about 10+ interwoven cracks/splits throughout the entire body where it had expanded.  No damage to the Sig or myself thank goodness.

Since then I have individual range ammo bags for each caliber that I own and I never switch them around (9mm, 10mm and .45 acp)

[bnolsen]

The case rupture in the all steel witness didn't alarm me nearly as much as the glock's rupture.  Yes my hand got some light powder scorching but the plastic mag plate cleanly blew out.  If the mag plate was aluminum like the replacement witness mag base plates tend to be I'm not sure where all that pressure would have gone.