Along with my CZ Safari Classic Rifle I purchased a 10-pack of 404 Jeffery Monolithic Solid from CZ-USA. Problem is: I am unable to close the bolt on the rifle. I have successfully fired my own handloads (RWS, Bell & Norma Brass with Woodleigh and Hawk Bullets) and Loads made by Superior Ammo. Below is a comparison:

CZ-AMMO (which is A-Square)- A-Square Brass,
A-Square 400 gr Monolithic Solid.
COL= 3.478, Case= 2.854,
Bullet diameter= .405

Handload- Bell Brass,
Woodleigh 400 Gr SN.
COL= 3.517, Case= 2.841,
Bullet diameter= .333

Any ideas?

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Check to make sure the bullet isn't engaging the rifling. Many 404j have very short throats & the blunt nose monosolids can engage the rifling before you can close the bolt.
BTW, something is wrong w/ your bullet dia. How can you have a bullet dia. of .405, much less .333?

The odd thing is, the A-square is the shortest of all my loads (handloads or factory loads).

quote:

Originally posted by eurocentric:
The odd thing is, the A-square is the shortest of all my loads (handloads or factory loads).

It may be the shortest overall but look how far out those straight sided bullets stay straight. I'm guessing, as already said above, that they're up against the rifling before you can close the bolt. I had the same thing on my 404 with reloaded Rhino bullets when seated to the crimping groove (with a very bothersome result).

What Wink said. Blacken the bullet noe w/ a Sharpie & run it in slow & try to chamber it. Remove it & see if there isn't some "engraving" on the bullet. I'm betting yes.

What the other guys have said, plus, you might care to try & insert the bullet of the rounds in question carefully into the muzzle to give you an idea of how far they will enter before they engage the rifling. If the mono will barely enter the muzzle the you will almost certainly have too short a chamber throat for that projectile. You may be able to find a gunsmith to lengthen the throat enough to remedy this though I suspect 404 throat reamers aren't exactly common. I also noticed your case length with the mono is slightly longer. Try inserting a case that you've pulled the bullet from to check that the case isn't too long for the chamber.
Steve.

I think its the a-square bullet/brass combo. norma rws and bell brass work just fine, even though norma and rws are longer cases. i can feed 450 gr woodleigh bullets just fine as well. i shipped the ammo back to cz-usa, they want to investigate further. The rifle is great and feeds perfectly.

/

Great explanation thanks so much.

Just out of curiosity; was there some significance in the photo containing the .425 WR? roger

As an aside to bullet protrusion being the issue here and without even seeing the problem close up I would also wager that the make of the ammo gives rise to the problem also. I had a number of serious issues with A2 ammo many years back in 458 lott.

I had 2 boxes each of monolithic and Dead Toughs and on opening up the boxes I noted different lengths of loaded rounds, some had the case neck mid cannelure whilst others were crimped off the cannelure altogether. On standing the rounds next to each other I noticed that some of the cases were far longer than others (more than a few thousands of an inch, quite visible infact) and on checking with a vernier it became clear that although the bulk of cases were trimmed to the 2.8" case length accepted as standard for the Lott, a few cases were the ful llength 2.850" of the parent .375 case, i.e a full .050" longer than chamber length specs.

Worse, these rounds had heavy rolled crimps into the monolithic bullet cannelures and even though over length could, with a degree of resitance on the bolt be chambered, on firing this would have caused bullet pinching and a huge pressure spike.

Word back from A2 at that time was that this phenomonen was not possible but I still have one of the headstamped rounds to prove it so. Of the rounds that were correct length, many upon firing exhibited splitting of the case just ahead of the belt.

Of the rounds we chronographed some were at stated box velocity, some were over 130 fps above with very sticky extraction.

I never bothered further with that ammo, simply pulling the bullets, scrapping the brass and the bullets but keeping the pretty coloured boxes for my own hand loads