Pressure Signs

When I look through the reloading books, everything is in terms of bullet weight, powder in grains and velocity. If I go out to the range with a new batch of reloads and it falls within the specs outlined for that particular load, my assumption is everything is fine. However, I have read on more than one occasion, never assume. With that being said, I always check my brass for tall tale signs.

Knowing that each particular gun has a maximum pressure level for a load, how do you measure pressure levels? I would like to make sure that I am within the range of what the gun can handle. Please educate me.

The first thing I inspect is the primer. If the edges of the primer are still rounded, the pressure's well within reasonable limits. If it has flattened considerably and looks almost perfectly flush with the cartridge case, that's my first major clue that pressure's high. The point at which I deem a load too hot is when the cases begin to stick in the chamber and give me trouble extracting them. If I see a damaged primer or a lot of soot around its edge, especially in conjunction with the aforementioned signs, I'll back off a minimum of one grain, preferably two.

That's the way I do it, at least.

Yeah I'm the same way TN. But with my 460, sometimes I get sticky cases, sometimes I don't. I think the weaker brass is usually when the problem shows up (Brass that has been fired several times). I actually had the brass casing separate from the base a few times on the last trip out to the range. It separated about 3/8" up from the base. It came out just fine, but had to push a cleaning brush through from the muzzle to get the rest of the casing out. I literally had two pieces as it completely separated from the wall of the casing. Every one of them that broke, broke at the same spot. My resizing die doesn't go all the way to the bottom of the case, and it broke right at the "line" where the resizing die stops.

In my case, I really don't think it was over pressure, but rather weak brass. I called another guy on this forum that I trust completely, and asked his opinion, and he thought the same thing. I don't get flattened primers at all with the load I'm shooting, but with weak brass, it did blow apart a few cases.

Oh, and just for grins, the impact of the bullet was still online, but hit about a foot and a half low because of the loss of pressure when the case blew out. In a revolver, it would have been a much different scenario I think.

The load I'm using is well below the max listed on Hodgdon's site.

Wow. What brand of brass were you using?