grayfox Wrote:So..... 0130 and the dog's "bad dream" woke me up too...
So I just did a quick google on brass case failure and grendel brass failure.
Less than 5 minutes came up with 4 shooters with multiple cases of kabooms among them, both Grendel and AR15. Hornadys, x39 conversions, and some-sorta (223) Walmart brand, and Fiocchi.
I show 2 of the websites here.
Brass failure (65grendel.com)
Catastrophic AR Failure | John1911.com Gun Blog
Dates: 2011.
And 2016.
My earlier point is evidenced here. That is, WE DO NOT KNOW the actual extent and numbers of failures, only those that get reported. In these cases, Lapua is absent. [I would infer from the threads/discussions that the commenters have seen even more of these, but that is an inference and I can't quantify it.] Now in my industry, every failure, even apparent or "looks-like" failures, "almost failures", are logged, analyzed, and reported to a common industry database so others can look/see/benefit, even comment on them.
Face it, this forum is an anecdotal one, relying completely upon reports from whoever posts. "unreported" means "unknown" but is not "un-occurred," so to speak. Now I've found at least 4 other mfrs of brass cases, and could infer a few others, again from the commenters.
In MY industry, we know HOW MANY cases of a given failure are happening, who made them, all the details. In this industry of my persuasion, we can infer or even calculate failure rates, across all the companies, all components, material makes, uses, etc, and not just for our own individual plant.
Lze, this is not the case for our Grendels. Agreed, 3 is worrisome, but now the "universe" of kaboom has just expanded and Lapua brass is not alone, rather one of a small company - a band of kaboomed brothers. Generalize on your own if you want, but it won't fly as any sort of real data-driven conclusion. We do not know how many because not every one gets reported.
All of the instances I found in my 5-minute search were cases with improperly sized ammo, over loaded or warm/over spec ammo, excessive case headspace, headspace, headspace. Occurrences from varying sources, and admittedly across 2 rifle styles, but they are all kabooms. None of these are Lapua. [Again note that I'm not a fan of Lapua nor against it, I don't have a dog in that fight and frankly don't care.]
Common thread, if there be one, and this is inductive of only the ones I could find in a short search, not an exhaustive cataloging of all cases that actually occurred, is not Lapua brass, but - wait for it - excessive headspace. Hot loads a contributing factor. In one of the cases a short barreled rifle was present, a 10.5" which would be similar but not equal to the 12" in OP's case.
Perhaps others can unearth more cases but I've at least shown that one cannot generalize from the voluntarily-reported cases currently under discussion.
Also admitted is that it's (again) late at night/early in the AM, so maybe my rusty brain ain't perkin' like it should. But hopefully somebody sees my point. Somebody more than just my doggie, who is still awake and lying at my feet. Doggie nightmares are a bummer.
grayfox I completely see your point. The bottom line is that we will never outright prove that it is any one manufacturer's brass at fault. The only way to prove this is to conduct the exact same failures under the same exact conditions with only the brass manufacturer being different. And let the better brass win. And no reloader or manufacturer in their right mind will want to conduct this experiment. So it is futile to argue it, but you also cannot take it off the table.
Also I will say that after skimming those threads is that there's a lot of assumptions and unsupported statements that the failures were from headspace, but I can't say I agree with the claims of it. Just my $0.02.