Old 30/30 ammo

Bullshot

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I took my 30/30 to the range the other day and also scrounged up 6 rounds of old vintage ammo I had laying around. I actually forget now whether it was remington or winchester head stamps (threw the brass away at the range) but it was 50+ year old ammo, or maybe quite a bit more, from my grandfather's era that was sitting in a bullet collection and I just wanted to use up. I shot a bunch of modern stuff w/no incident and then loaded the old shells. I smelled a LOT of burnt powder smell after firing them (all went BANG without a hitch) but when I inspected the spent brass, 4 had badly split the necks and one had split in two locations.

Is this normal of old brass? And if so, why? I'm glad it's gone at any rate and now I WON'T be firing my 1930's vintage 8mm mauser ammo even though I've used some before (about 30 years ago) and I'd like to think it would be fine.
 
brass age hardened and powder was probably starting to decompose. A metallurgist will tell you that's not a thing but lots of reports online about similar split necks on old factory ammo.
 
Lord
I have fired actual German Nazi 8mm ammo in my 98 Mauser no problem at all
And yes I cleaned it good afterwards !
 
Brass definitely hardens over time, and chemical interaction can accelerate or amplify this reaction
 
Also you can get the bullet “welded” to the brass after it sits a long time. That would create a pressure spike that can do weird things to the brass.
 
Was it actually .30-30. Just because it had .30-30 on the head stamp doesn't make it .30 cal. 25-35?
 
I would not have fired it. Rather I woukldhave pulled the bullet's, primer's and reloaded the case's. I have a bunch of old FA 1949 30-06 case's that I still use and they work fine! I would suspect the powder and primer's caused the problem.
 
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