Fractured Shell Casing Owning an Extractor

A shell casings can crack on occasion in normal shooting. Some because of being factory flaws and others because of other factors. Knowing why could be important depending on the gun. This copper washed steel shell casing shows a tare near the whole length of the body of the shell. First, most of these communist country imports are made of steel. The shell is Berdan primed meaning it is considered unreliable. (This is false-- difficult perhaps to reload but not impossible would be a better term but it must be shot in the gun it was fired in so as not to use any standard loading equipment. The primer must be rebuilt and I have re-shot these steel shell casings before in preparation for the first publication of one of my books. But this is not the topic of this post.) One of the first considerations on these Berdan cases is that the steel douse not act like brass. When a brass shell casing is fired it expands and then contracts making it the metal of choice as it makes for easier extraction. The communist country's changed to a steeper slope on the shell casing so the steel casings are easier to extract. Even at that the head (bottom part of the shell in the photo above with the rim) can be torn off and the remainder of the shell can be left in the gun. Even with brass shell casings. This necessitates the gun needing to be sent to a gunsmith to remove the remaining part of the shell or using a shell case extractor to pull out the part in the field. This would be a good investment no mater what gun you had and the device is 100% re-usable and generally is an inexpensive part that could save your life. It is the size of a normal bullet. It chambers like a bullet and on extraction it grabs the shell casing and extracts it using the ejector claw on the bolt. Some of the reasons for the head to tare off. 1)If reloaded ammo was sized short 2) head space problem in the gun 3) or a peculiar fluke like in the shell casing above. A tare like above is generally not critical as long as the gas is held in check in tell the bullet leaves the gun. But if the head would have torn it can releases up to 30,000 pounds of pressure in the bolt aria and the stock explodes. and it can cause sever injury. If your gun is having frequent shell case problems stop shooting it and  have it checked by a gun smith.

In the photo above at about where the bottom end of the crack is, is the place where the head of the case (at the bottom of the photo above) will tare off. This broken shell case extractor below was around $3 from a company called Cheaper Than Dirt  and a small investment for such a life saving device. Richard W Norman

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