Possible cause of damaged casing?

[PennsyPlinker]

Today I had my brandy new Sig Sauer P220 Beavertail out for its first range session. The gun pretty much performed flawlessly through about 60 rounds. I was shooting Winchester White Box exclusively - no weird stuff, no reloads, nothing out of the ordinary. The gun handled very well, and while it throws the brass anywhere from 6" to 20' from where I am standing, it is very accurate at the other end.

I did have one "issue", and that is the casing in the picture below. This particular casing is unique in all that I fired today. It fired properly, and there was no difference in the feel or the sound of it, but when I recovered it, you can see what I discovered. I immediately cleared the gun, disassembled it, and checked it for damage. Mikey and I both checked it over and could not find anything out of the ordinary, so I ran another magazine through it. Nothing. So I ran another through. Nothing again. I ran a third through with no other anomalous occurrences.

Do I need to be concerned about this? Do I need to think about sending it off to Sig Sauer for inspection? I would hate to have the thing kaboom on me, but that doesn't seem to be the case (so to speak). I would be interested to hear any theories on what might have happened to cause this kind of damage to the casing.

[headcase]

Weak spot on the brass? Without being able to actually handle the case, and from you saying there was no weird feel when fired, it may have just blown open a bad spot on the case. Only thing I can think of, as I would imagine you may have felt a little something if had caught during insertion. I am by no means an expert though

[edstephan]

Where the nick in the case is it bent in? Its hard to tell in the picture.
It may have caught the ejection port on ejection
Ed

[PennsyPlinker]

HC, I thought about it just being a weak spot in the casing. And Ed, there is a nick that is bent in about 60 degrees around the edge from this tear, which is bent out. It ejected just fine, although it did not fly very far, as many of them did. It sort of flew straight up and landed on my left arm coming down, which is why I noticed it right away.

[MrBi11]

You stated the casings were going 6" to 20', is it possible that that casing landed close to you with a lot of force, hitting an object [rock etc] splitting it after the fact?

Picture looks like the mouth of the case was hit to me, the way it's curled back and in. I would think pressures would have the opposite effect.

[mauser]

I'm thinking along the same line as edstephan, it looks like it was damaged while ejecting. It may have been a "light" load and didn't get thrown clear of the ejection port before the slide started to close, causing it to be pinched and damaged as it was leaving the gun. That would explain why it didn't eject as far or the same direction as the others did.
If you haven't cleaned the gun yet you may be able to see a mark from the brass on the forward edge of the ejection port to verify that theory.

[ithinkimamedic]

Pennsy, I've had the exact same problem with brass from my P220ST. It can not be anticipated when it happened and it does not happen frequently either. I have attributed it to basically what Ed and Mauser have written. It's usually a weak ejection when it does happen and I have never been able to "reproduce" it and make the gun eject like that either. I've had maybe 10 cases come out like that in the last 4 with abour 2.5k through the gun.
Hope that helps! Maybe 1blndref will come through with more experience with the sig line and have an explination.

Cheers,
Josh

[Kevin3824]

Today I had my brandy new Sig Sauer P220 Beavertail out for its first range session. The gun pretty much performed flawlessly through about 60 rounds. I was shooting Winchester White Box exclusively - no weird stuff, no reloads, nothing out of the ordinary. The gun handled very well, and while it throws the brass anywhere from 6" to 20' from where I am standing, it is very accurate at the other end.

I did have one "issue", and that is the casing in the picture below. This particular casing is unique in all that I fired today. It fired properly, and there was no difference in the feel or the sound of it, but when I recovered it, you can see what I discovered. I immediately cleared the gun, disassembled it, and checked it for damage. Mikey and I both checked it over and could not find anything out of the ordinary, so I ran another magazine through it. Nothing. So I ran another through. Nothing again. I ran a third through with no other anomalous occurrences.

Do I need to be concerned about this? Do I need to think about sending it off to Sig Sauer for inspection? I would hate to have the thing kaboom on me, but that doesn't seem to be the case (so to speak). I would be interested to hear any theories on what might have happened to cause this kind of damage to the casing.

You said every shot was flawless so are you sure this casing was from your gun? I ask that because I have seen that damage before from my Glock when my daughter was first learning to shoot she had a couple bad habits such as applying pressure to the mag while holding the gun and limp wristing the gun while she was firing it. These bad traits caused the gun not to properly eject the brass. When that happened the slide came back at least once and caught the brass before it cleared the chamber. This caused damage that appeared identical to what you have pictured there.

That was the only time I have seen that type of damage to a case hope it helps.

[PennsyPlinker]

This case was definitely from my gun, since it popped up into the air and landed on my arm. I caught it before it even hit the ground. The weak charge theory sounds good. I will check the gun as soon as I have a chance. That won't be until later on today.

Thanks for the responses everyone!

[PennsyPlinker]

I spent some time looking at the extractor, and it might have a hint of brass on the front of it, but it is hard to say. I'll just have to get the thing out to the range and run some more ammo through it to make sure it won't happen again. Overall, I have to say that of all the guns I have ever purchased (or even fired for that matter), this one gave me the warmest feeling heading home from the range. Many has been the time going home after a first range session where I was on the discouraged side, thinking about how much more I needed to practice to be able to shoot so as not to embarrass myself with that particular gun.

But this Sig was accurate right out of the box, just like their ads say, and I shot it very well both two handed and one handed. In fact, the last magazine I fired was one handed, and it was also the tightest group of all! I do need to spend some time learning the double action a little more, but hey, even if that one goes awry, I've got eight more single action shots coming right behind.

The short reset trigger was a joy to use, and I can see it getting even better as I practice with it. I could feel a distinct click as it reset while firing, not just dry firing. As I mentioned before, I think it will not be long before this gun graduates to my EDC gun.

Mauser and Ed, I just reread your posts after hitting the post button, and checked the forward edge of the ejection port (not the extractor) Sure enough, there is a little brass smudge. As I think back to the way this casing ejected, it bobbled out of the gun instead of being thrown out, so I think you may be right in your assessment.