Notice the rings on the shoulder of these fired .308 rounds. I assume that they are an imprint of the reamer blades that were never polished out of the chamber (Rifle is a cheap Baikel). Rings show up no matter how heavy or how light the load.

I assume this is no problem, right?

Picture of brass fired in Baikel/Remington SPR18. Photo does not do the rings justice, as they are very pronounced.

if it really bothers you have your chamber shoulder polished. also shows your head spaceing on your front shoulder and thats as it should bee.
regards

quote:

Originally posted by jjmp:
also shows your head spaceing on your front shoulder and thats as it should bee.
regards

I'd think they would contact the shoulder of the chamber during fireing, maybe not before, and maybe not after (FLS.)

This shows a "crappy" chambering job in my opinion. Likely won't hurt the brass, but looks ugly.

muck

You could use one of your cases and polish it out, but don't change the headspace, go easy..

The marks are made when you close the chamber as you have a crush fit, its not a real problem IMO...Or on opening the chamber also, one or the other or both. If your set your die back just a tad it will quit doing that I think, but you will lose your crush fit, and thats good if your hunting with the rifle you don't want a crush fit, a little slop is sometimes a good thing...

Even with the die set back a bit, wouldn't the brass flow into the rings when the case was fired? When you rotate the bolt handle down into battery is there a slight resistance (crush fit)?
I don't think there's too much to worry about altho the stresses of reloading will center on those rings and the cases may ultimatly fail at that point. After how many reloads only time will tell.
A call to one of your local smiths to find out the cost of having the chamber burnished or stopping by and showing him some of your fired cartridges might bring you some more peace of mind.

Seems like a complaint to Remington is in order.

My hornet does that from neck to 3/4 way down the body. Does 15 reloads per case sound reasonable? (And still going). These are not light loads (nor are they overloads). There should be no case 'creep' during firing at the neck and shoulder area so no damage to the case wall should occur. Case 'creep' begins a little back from the shoulder and is maximum at the web. (Although, as the pressure drops in the chamber, the front of the case releases it's grip and 'springs' back toward the base, which is still held against the bolt, face under pressure. This might leave 'sliding' marks on the neck).

P.S. I have had one case failure (insipient case head separation) occurring on the rearmost reamer blade groove. All the other failures I've had were from cases weakened in another rifle - and they failed in the normal place. (Mostly on the first firing in my rifle).