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Tonight I was loading up some .300 win mag ammo to try out tomorrow. Brass was once fired and full length sized Lapua. First lot were Barnes MRX and everything went to plan, as usual. I had the rifle on the bench to obtain and double check overall length on each load. Then some Lapua Scenars. I loaded 5 up and while I was running them through the rifle to see if the bullets were engraving, one round stuck. It was a bit hard to close but I put it down to the bullet still seated too far out. The bolt came back out without the cartridge and I had to tap it out with a cleaning rod. Confused, I decided to try it again. This time it was tough to close the bolt, but I figured I see if it would grab the round and extract it. It stuck again. I put that case aside and continued to check the others. A few trials later, another round stuck, same thing. I grabbed my calipers and started checking for anything out of spec. Nothing was out. It seemed that maybe the shoulder on these cases was contacting the chamber more than it should but it's hard to tell. Still not satisfied I ran a boresnake through the chamber and barrel in csae there was anything in there and tried the sticky cases again. They stuck, and had to be tapped back out. I measured them again, nothing out of the ordinary. After that I got called away from the reloading shed, I'll probably just pull the bullets and re-size the cases, but it was truly strange. Any ideas? | ||
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| One of Us |
Neck tension? Ogive variance between bullets? | |||
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I know you know all of this, but here goes anyway. I have an 06 that I really have to cam over on the press, to bump the shoulder back just a little to make it fit in the chamber. It works fine after that. Check your brass length. Also check the bullets to see if they are engaging the rifling on your loaded rounds. If you have changed bullets styles it just might be the bullet ogive. Like I said you know all of this but, just thought I would throw in my 2 cents worth. | |||
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My guess would be that the necks are to thick or to long. | |||
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Express, interesting stuff. I have a 9.3 x 62 that I run Lapua brass through. I find the brass top notch. I always run them through a full length die and nothing has changed in all the time I have used them. BUT... the last two times I have taken reloads down to shoot I have found that maybe 1 in 10 will cause the bolt on my 98 to close stiff. I have not tried to eject the unfired round, and they have shot and ejected fine. These round are 7 or so reloads old now but the brass is fine and as said before nothing else has changed.I measure COAL on each round as I seat the bullet and all is correct. I will try to eject and then set aside any others that play up so's to go over them with the verniers an check dimensions. Stu | |||
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What did the last case look like you fired before the chambering problem? Did it all come out? Regards, Bob. | |||
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The brass had just been full length sized. It has been neck turned and the bullets were not engaging the rifling enough to cause real problems. I use candlesmoke to check for engraving and I was only just touching. I'll go check the cases before I pull then and see what the promblem was. | |||
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What a dangerous situation you have! NEVER tap out a loaded round unless you lock the gun down outside with nobody around. Hold the rod with a tool and stand way back to the side of the muzzle. A BR shooter had a stuck round and tapped it out. Trouble was that it went off and the case came out the back and killed his wife who was behind the rifle. Impact can sometimes ignite the powder! A gentle push is safer. Be careful guys. | |||
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I think you may have to screw your die in more to bump the shoulder back just a bit. The Stoney Point gauge is a great tool for checking head to shoulder measurments. This tool will tell you exacly what your FL dies are doing, no guess work. | |||
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In your situation I'd have someone take 0.010-0.015 off the mouth of the die to correct that issue. AD If I provoke you into thinking then I've done my good deed for the day! Those who manage to provoke themselves into other activities have only themselves to blame. *We Band of 45-70er's* 35 year Life Member of the NRA NRA Life Member since 1984 | |||
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Did you try sizing your brass and then putting it in the guns chamber to check the fit? I would try that first and if it fits well then you are having a bullet problem that has been mentioned above. I have to do this quit often with the WSM & WSSM cartrides and due to their shoulder set back. Just my .02.   | |||
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"impact can ignite the powder" Naaaah, I'm gonna have to throw the bullshit flag. Just to make sure, I went out to the shop and poured a trace amount of smokeless powder on the anvil and, wearing proper face protection, hit it with a shop hammer. Results were a lot of little flat pieces of powder. I am curious though. If the cartridge stuck the first time, why would we not expect it to stick the second time? Was this a government project? Smoke or blacken an entire cartridge and see where the cartridge is making first contact. The different bullet may have a different contour or your seater die may not be set up just right and is coming in contact with the mouth of the case and is bulging the shoulders of your case. Measure the shoulders of a case that has been resized only and one that has charged with a bullet seated. I think our problem is going to be in the fact we're changing bullets. Before you do a lot of pulling and changing and such, try seating the new bullets a turn or two deeper into the case and see if that clears up your problem. | |||
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Just a guess for me but I'd look at the shoulder touching as the culprit. I just PFLR some prefired .270 WSM cases and upon checking to see if they'd chamber, 5 out of 20 wouldn't. I got to checking their lengths to the datum lines and all 5 were too long. The good ones measured good. Ran the ones that were too long back thru the PFLR die again, making sure that the arm of my press was all the way down and then I let them sit in that position a few seconds. Voila!!!! Good case that chamber fine. I'd run yer cases thru again. Hope this helps. Later, Bear in Fairbanks Unless you're the lead dog, the scenery never changes. I never thought that I'd live to see a President worse than Jimmy Carter. Well, I have. Gun control means using two hands. | |||
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The reason I found this whole situtation wierd is that of the batch of 30 odd cases all resized minutes prior, only these two gave me trouble. Neither did the others with that same bullet. I still haven't gotten around to investigating the problem, the rest of the ammo is fine. | |||
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FACT mate. By memory at least one case happened here, in Brisbane. Your test is faulty. You know how primers are touchy to impact? You know cases have a big hole through to the primer? You also may imagine it won't happen all the time, but may at the worst time. | |||
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Jal, 1. You're not hitting the primer. You're hitting the bullet. How many detonations have you heard of from a compressed load? Or being dropped? I mean really heard, not Uncle Charlie's beer-drinking buddy's first cousin's neighbor's dog's mother-in-law. 2. You need to review how a primer works. it takes a sharp blow to the anvil to ignite the thing. You can crush one in a vise without it firing. Perhaps in Oz, just like the water swirls away backwards, primers act differently? ??? | |||
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I have a 22-250 with a minimum, but SAAMI spec chamber. My RCBS FL die will not move the shoulder back enouch to chamber properly. A Lee FL die does work. I went the die back to RCBS with a drawing of the case and it's sized dimensions, which exceeded SAAMI length from base to shoulder/neck junction. RCBS sent me a small base die, and said the FL die was within spec. The small base die doesn't work, either! Stuff happens. | |||
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I`ve seen a couple of posts on various boards claiming cartridges have fired from the use of impact bullet pullers. Primers are designed to be sensitive to impact, and I have little doubt if a dud was tapped out of a chamber the possiblity exists of the primer igniting. Powders are also impact sensitive this warning is on every can from all manufactures I have used  ------------------------------------ The trouble with the Internet is that it's replacing masturbation as a leisure activity. ~Patrick Murray "Why shouldn`t truth be stranger then fiction? Fiction after all has to make sense." (Samual Clemens) "Saepe errans, numquam dubitans --Frequently in error, never in doubt". | |||
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That was the story he gave the police.  rogerOld age is a high price to pay for maturity!!! Some never pay and some pay and never reap the reward. Wisdom comes with age! Sometimes age comes alone.. | |||
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I believe you've deformed a few case shoulders when seating the bullets. I've seen it before -especially when one uses a crimp. Take your dies apart, clean them thoroughly, then reassemble in the normal fashion. This is a textbook case where a case length/head space gauge would pay dividends. Now for your second problem -either your extractor isn't doing its job, or your brass is bad. The bolt should not have fully opened without bringing the case with it(or at least a piece of the rim). Obviously the bolt provides sufficient cam force to open the action because you got it open, however, the case should have come with it. | |||
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I have driven primers out of a case while trying to compress fine grained ball powder. This leads me to think that if it were done with kenetic energy, a blow, rather than just pressure the anvil can be driven against the priming mixture traping it against the primer cup before it's inertia, the cups, was overcome.Hey! We can call it HYDRAULIC DETONATION.  rogerOld age is a high price to pay for maturity!!! Some never pay and some pay and never reap the reward. Wisdom comes with age! Sometimes age comes alone.. | |||
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Okay guys, first off, what is it about "I put a trace amount of powder on an anvil and hit it with a shop hammer" that you don't understand? Now then, I will bow to the chicken littles in the world: We don't really know if it was the bullet that was jammed or the case, but lets assume it was the case, and it was quite jammed. I mean he had really bore down on the bolt handle trying to bring the rifle into battery. So that any tapping on the bullet would create movement of the bullet and not the case. And really, it would have to go beyond "tapping". Lets further assume that he was using a compressed load of very fine powder in the case. I've looked in my load books and couldn't find a load of say H414 that would fill the case but, hey, this is cyberspace where flights of fancy need not ever set foot on the harsh ground of reality. And so we have a stuck case, with a compressed charge of very fine powder, with a loose bullet, being pounded on by a push rod. THEN, I'll admit, that the remote possibility exist that a frustratedly, savage blow could transfer enough kenetic energy to the bullet which would drive the fine powder (forget that the energy would also be dissapating LATTERALLY in the powder, this is cyberspace remember) through the flash hole with enough velocity to drive the anvil into the priming compound with enough force to ignite the compound and fire the cartridge. The bolt would be out of the rifle of course, and the cartridge would then come unstuck and fly precisely thru the very narrow opening thru the action and strike the shooter's wife and kill her. Mind you, this is hitting her at whatever distance with the blunt end of the cartridge. Yes, Virginia, this might indeed happen. And those of you that believe it, be sure and look under the bed before you tuck yourselves in tonight.  JAL, I would love to read the actual police report or at least a new article. | |||
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Anyway, what have we found out about the No Go cartridges? | |||
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You must have been using single base powder. I can set off powder granules on my shop floor with a kentic bullet puller if I don't clean up the splilled powder. I'll assume for the purposes here it must be double-base powders with nitroglycerine. They make a loud "pop" and the smell, as I'm sure you know, is unmistakable. I'm no rocket scientist but I never had a long shoulder/headspace cause a sticking case, just a hard bolt closing. The only things I know that will cause a case to sick are expanded cases that grab the chamber walls (as in fire-formed in a different chamber) or long case necks or bullets that stick in the throat. "Experience" is the only class you take where the exam comes before the lesson. | |||
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Once that I know of personally. Cheers, Dave. Aut Inveniam Viam aut Faciam. | |||
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It's hard, but not impossible, to set off smokeless powder by impact. Julian Hatcher in his Notebook long ago reported about a soldier assigned to test this by firing .30-06 rounds through a large can of powder. On one shot the can lit off, rolling him backward off his seat! "A cheerful heart is good medicine." | |||
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Well I don't have a police report or a (news) article, I just believe it happened, and our NRA then banned the practise on their ranges. Now we didn't mention this accident to intrigue someone called stillbeeman, or care who believes it or not, but to warn shooters, who should at least make sure no one is standing in line with the firearm. Not much trouble?? | |||
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The woman was killed at a bench rest match. I have read of one other instance where the guy was left holding the cleaning rod when the round went off but there were no injuries. Apparently it can happen regardless of what stillbeeman thinks. | |||
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Try 'em in the rifle EMPTY next time, and don't load them until you find out why they won't go into the chamber easily-you may have to FL size them again to get them to chamber..... "Bitte, trinks du nicht das Wasser. Dahin haben die Kuhen gesheissen." | |||
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There has been at least one case I am aware of that was reported in the American Rifleman of a piece of brass killing a person standing behind the gun laying on a shooting rest as someone else tried to tap a stuck live round out of the chamber with a cleaning rod. "Bitte, trinks du nicht das Wasser. Dahin haben die Kuhen gesheissen." | |||
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Still, I believe if you contact the NRA about this, they could give you the reference to the case in which it did happen! It was written up in the American Rifleman 20-30 yeras ago...... "Bitte, trinks du nicht das Wasser. Dahin haben die Kuhen gesheissen." | |||
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Another cause of an elongated, stretched shoulder (or shoulder / neck transition) can be the expander ball on the sizing die’s decapping stem. When the newly re-sized case is pulled back out of the sizing die the expander ball can stretch the shoulder a bit and cause a hard to chamber* round. Cleaning and lubing the inside of the brass case neck (and periodic cleaning of the expander ball) will usually fix this specific malady. * Can’t say why this would cause your rounds to stick in the chamber though, that part still has me baffled.  | |||
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| one of us |
How did the boresnake clean your chamber? Don't they only touch the bore? I'd start from the beginning and run a bristle brush soaked with powder solvent in the chamber. Then wet patches, then dry patches. You never know, you might have a buildup of case lube inside the chamber. | |||
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| One of Us |
I wonder since it was just a couple of rounds out of several could he have short stroked the press? I also think the different bullet profile might be the culprit and seating the new bullet a couple of turns deeper may clear up the problem. | |||
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| One of Us |
I have experienced this on several calibers where I failed to champher the case mouth or tried to crimp a bullet too heavily. The shoulder is pushed back onto the case body and the junction of the shoulder and body is ever so slightly enlarged. If you are sucessful in chambering the round and actually fire it, the case is fireformed and will extract normaly. If the case is not fired, the cartridge may cause difficult extraction. At other times, I have had the cartridge fail to chamber at all. I believe that the culprit is the length of the brass. If a bullet is seated in a case of slightly longer length, the bullet is tightly crimped. This may be enough to create this "ring" at the case/shoulder junction and cause problems with chambering and if NOT fired, with extraction. | |||
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