Hello the campfire:
Well group, I have some problems with my son's 7mm mag and the reloads that I made up for it. I hope the you all can help me out.
The rifle is a Browning. It shoots factory fodder more accuratly than I would beleive.
The new cases reload great and I have no problems with them.
I bought 100 empties from e-bay. I full length resize in my RCBS dies because I don't know what they were shot in.
I do know that who ever shot them used a pretty hot load because of the primers being flat and the bases looking like they had been hammered pretty good.
The brass appears to be in good shape except for one that was split at the neck.
My problem is that they are hard to chamber, even after sizing. I have trimed to .00l less that the published cartrage length. I seat to the specs in the Hornady book.
I have notced that it takes a LOT of pressure to resize these cartrages. I even got one stuck (after lubing it) and tore the base off. I suspect that the shells are streched behind the belt due to a rifle with excessive head space (belt to bolt). Is this a possibility?
What esle would cause this problem.
I load other belted cartrages with out problems.
Should I just dump this lot and start over?
I wish he (my son) would trade for something else. I really think he would enjoy the .280 Rem. a lot more.
Thanks for any suggestions.
Judge Sharpe

Your chamber may be like the one I have in my 7mag. It requires a small base sizer to chamber the reloaded rounds easily. If I use a standard RCBS sizing die, the rounds won't chamber in my own gun, due to the tight chamber.

If I were you, I would just spring for some new brass and go from there. Most of your problems will go away with the 7mag once you get brass that has not been fired in someone else's rifle.

Every chamber is different, and yours and my rifle are evidence of that.

Good shooting,

HL

If your Browning is a semi auto I would agree with HL. If not you have other problems like a possible undersized chamber or over sized dies.

I've had similar problems with belted cases from Federal, and standard cases from Winchester.

With the belted case, it was a matter of the case not being properly resized just forward of the belt -left a little oversized ring as it were maybe .025" ahead of the belt. Today they sell a nifty little tool (die) just for that, but I don't use one as new brass is cheaper. With a split neck, you're looking at more work because the necks need to be annealed. I'd just abandon the project, but don't throw 'em out yet as you might have to buy another set of dies as suggested above.

With the Winchester cases, I came to the conclusion that it was a poor lot of brass. Just like spring steal, the cases would "grow" back to a larger size, even after repeated sizings. Scrapped those too.

Two things come to mind. One was mentioned. A hot load can balloon the case at the head where the die can't fix it.

The second is a long shot, but check the headspace dimension of the new lot vs. the old lot (measure from the front of the belt to the base of the cartridge). I have one tight chambered 7mag that won't chamber Norma brass because the belt is to far forward. HTH, Dutch.

That is one reason that I do not use brass fired in someone elses gun.This problem actually occurs more often than you might think.

I had a very similar problem. I bought an Encore a few years ago, before I started reloading. I also had a Savage bolt-action and both we chamber in 7mm mag. I saved all of my empties (all factory loaded). I decided to get into reloading so I resized them all. I don't know why I didn't just neck size them.
The ones shot from the Encore had the exact issue you had. It was that the Encore allowed for more movement of the case so they stretched more.
To make a long story short, I had to lube them liberally and use some force to get them to resize. The reply I got from this exact forum was to make sure that the resizing die touches the case holder completely and to make sure there is lube inside the neck.
I haven't had any problems since.

The first thing I would suggest is to try to chamber some of those cases AFTER you have resied them, but before you loaded them and seated a bullet. Do they cg=hambe rOK before you load them? If not, then take the neck sizing stem out of your FL die and size a few, then see if these will chamber OK. Sometimes, a tight sizing button can actually pull the shoulder forward a little when you drag it out of the case mouth if the neck is squeezed down too much on the upstroke and the inside of the neck is not adequately lubricated.

If this is happening, you need to lube the inside of the case necks when you use the expanding button.. A little Motor Mica or powdered graphite to dip the necks in before sizing helps a lot.

quote:

Originally posted by JudgeSharpe:
Should I just dump this lot and start over?
Judge Sharpe

YYYEp.