While these aren't reloads, I'm hoping this forum is the best spot for the question. My son and I were shooting today when he noticed one of the rounds that he was loading (factory Federal Gold Medal Match 45 ACP 230 gr FMJ) had a split in the still unfired round. After checking the box in question and the two remaining boxes that I had at home, approximately 15-20% of each box had cases that were split. We checked the handful of spent casings that we found at the range and several of the spent casings were cracked. Is this a situation were I should just shoot them and know that more brass will go into the trash rather than the reloading bucket or do I need to trash every live round that already has a crack in the case?
Factory ammo with split case
- Thread starter CEshooter
- Start date
You should contact Federal with pics and the lot number on the box. They will likely replace the box(es).
Federal replied back and said that 10 years is the limit for their warranty replacements and they said those boxes were pushing 12 years old. Now I'm curious as to how long ago these cases would have split as I had always thought about corrosion/moisture as an issue with long term storage of ammo but evidently case splitting is an issue as well. So much for stacking it deep when ammo's cheap.
Disappointing to hear, but I can understand there being some time limit. Unless there were obvious signs of corrosion from the packaging a split is usually a metallurgy problem; bad alloy, improper annealing during forming etc.
