One of the secret joys of messing with obsolescent calibers is that the manufacturer begins to let the specs loosen up on those ever more rare occasions when he grudgingly sets up the tooling for a run.

I’ve had .25-20 WCF and .22 Hornet where certain batches performed the way your .218 did, this back before they got their resurgence in the marketplace.  Don’t know what was the matter with the .25-20, but I measured the Hornets one time and found the base diameter was considerably under SAAMI specs.  But it all worked once, and that was all the manufacturer cared about.

I used to find .32-20 empty shells with a bunch of different lengths in the same box, and all shorter than standard.  Made for a puzzling crimping situation until I hauled out the calipers.  .25-20 Single Shot used to feature off-center flash holes and oval rims.  That’s one reason I never fully bought into the general denunciation of Bertram Brass; at least they were trying, and, except for metallurgy problems, the last issues of the stuff they were trying to copy were not exactly paragons of quality, either.

The ammo companies really wanted to hurry the obsolescence process along so they could firm up the excuse to drop the offerings.  I sometimes wonder how much hair was pulled in the Production and Marketing Depts of the big ammo manufacturers when the Cowboy Action, Shuetzen, Buffalo Rifle and other nostalgia elements of the fickle Shooting Public demanded a return of some of these calibers.

marlinguy wrote on Dec 19^th, 2017 at 1:28pm:



I've had the same thing happen Vall, old 06 ammo and 30-30.

How long does it take for it to be an issue?  Any brands worse than others?

For what it's worth, my collection of old cartridges seem to only have a few cracked necks. Every crack in them developed in a cartridge with a jacketed bullet. The lead loads seem to have survived for some reason- neck tension against the tougher jacket? Many of these have been loaded for over a hundred years- some well beyond that. I have never seen a crack in an early copper case (lead bullet), have you? So, I dunno................
I have seen whole boxes of new factory stuff with tiny splits that are likey to be annealing differences, but the factory must have determined that they would be safe for a single use. Whole box of .375 H&H came that way, and I sure hated junking those, since they don't exactly grow on trees here.