[Clark]

Any ideas on what signs to look for?

I can recall from 2005: There are two types of gun; Those that are stronger than the brass and those that are not. The guns stronger, I can incrementally work up until I see brass start to fail. If the whole brass case head fails there may be secondary failures, so the case must be checked carefully for small changes with each step. But if the gun is weaker than the brass, work ups have less useful meaning. One must avoid failure in a weak gun through large inaccurate folklore [published data]. CZ52s are weaker than the brass. Tokarevs are stronger than the brass. My single example C96 tests are inconclusive due to primer piercing due to firing pin to firing pin hole fit.

What does it all mean?
Don't work up a CZ52 looking for pressure sign on the brass.
Just use conservative published data.

 

[DK PHILLIPS]

So if using military steel cases not reloading safer...or hotter SB brass cases not so safe?

 

[Clark]

My only tests on Tokarev brass is that the S&B brass [pull down or reloaded] is stronger than the Starline brass. The only testing I have done on steel cases is 7.62x51 in an Ishapore, and that test was for accuracy.
Sorry.

 

[DK PHILLIPS]

I’d imagine steel is stronger in nice fitted chamber ?
SB is good brass..

 

[Fushigi Ojisan]

I've heard of CZ-52s with cracked slides, would this be a side effect of the too-tight chambers?

Also, you're not *the* Clark of rec.guns notoriety are you?

 

[Clark]

I have 100,000 posts on rec.guns, mostly in the 1990s.
In 1991, I went to work at Physio Control as a power supply design engineer to solve an EMI problem. There was a Spark workstation on my desk that had access to the usenet. Email took a week to get to my wife at Fluke, but once a day there was an update from rec.guns. Up until then I owned a 12 ga, a 30-06, and a 22, like my father did. My gun forum addiction lead to my gun buying addiction. By 1999 I started handloading, and blowing up guns was just like blowing up transistors when overload testing my power supply designs.
There are two rec.guns guys from Maryland; Ken Marsh the software engineer, and Magnum the professor of computer science and moderator.