Broken Cartridge in chamber

Terry Schultz

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I shoot a Uberti 1873 in 44-40. Recently I have had two cartridges break on me leaving the top part of it in the breach. I use Starline brass, 200gr molly coated bullets sized to .427 with 5.3 grains of Alliant Promo. Anyone have any idea why this is happening and how to stop it?


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I load .32/20 and .44/40 for use in 73 Winchesters. Both cases are very thin and prone to damage. Have you ever measured the length of a fired case? I'm thinking that excessive headspace could cause the case to stretch and eventually split.
 
i dont have a lot of 44-40 loading experience except helping my friends dad load for his.
Headspace of the case rime.
The 44-40 does have a slight taper
If you have factory ammo , compare some measurements to any new brass and your reloaded/resized brass.
I used lee dies and for the most part things went ok.
Although after resizing 25 cases a few times a few splits formed. The owner then mentioned feeding was not smooth with these loads and required a little extra mmpphh to chamber. He brought over his old winchester tool and first thing i noticed is it felt like there was very little "sizing" going on vs the lee dies.
Eventually we just backed off the lee die enough to just clean up the case shape and give it just a smidge to give the bullet some tension. Flare is minimal . Lee crimp die.
We trim to 1.33? We are on reload 4 from fresh brass and no problems yet.
 
I’m thinking excessive crimp. Tell us about crimping and post a pic of the naked bullet and loaded cartridge.
 
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I am loading on a Dillon 650. Use a Federal LP primer (150) and a LFC die. Here is a picture of the MT case, the bullet and a finished cartridge. I don’t keep tract of how many times my brass has been loaded but I inspect each one for cracks before I reload them. I wet tumble them with SS pins and some liquid car wash & wax.


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looks to me that its separating at the taper so I bet the brass is thinner at that point, especially after multiple loadings. Does it happen with new brass?
 
looks to me that its separating at the taper so I bet the brass is thinner at that point, especially after multiple loadings. Does it happen with new brass?

I am not sure if this was new or several times reloaded brass. I loaded them last Fall and I am not sure how much new brass I used.
 
looks to me that its separating at the taper so I bet the brass is thinner at that point, especially after multiple loadings. Does it happen with new brass?
I am not sure if this was new or several times reloaded brass. I loaded them last Fall and I am not sure how much new brass I used.

My dad used to reload 44-40 years ago and said that it's not one of the easier cases to work with, such as reloading straight-wall brass. When I ran your issue by him, he said that the cartridge is tapered in addition to having a small bottleneck. He also said that in the area where your cases split, between the shoulder and neck, the brass is very thin from there to the case mouth.

As others mentioned, the more times you reload this case, it gets even thinner in that area. He also suggested that you keep count of the number of times that you reload particular cartridges so that you get an idea of how many times you can do it without splitting cases. Even if you inspect them before reloading, which you said you do, he said that it might be easy to miss fine cracks that could develop from reworking the brass.
 
I never knew that was a tapered round till I saw the picture here. Its rimmed too so it headspaces on the rim which means its almost certainly not a headspace problem.
 
I'm not a gunsmith and don't understand a lot of the mechanics involved but why can't a cartridge that headspaces on the rim have excessive headspace? I had a Marlin 1893 in .30/30 that seemed to have it. Was I wrong?
 
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