I'm building a rifle in 340 weatherby with .248 free bore. Factory ammo produces a hard bolt lift and I wanted to see if anybody has had any experience with a similar chamber and throat length.

Also post this in gunsmithing!! It belongs in both forums. You will get more responses .

There is something obviously wrong if your getting a hard bolt lift.

If it is from too short a free bore it would be dangerously wrong.

Weatherby freebores run from a standard .375 to
.750 in the 378WBY.

As sbsmith has pointed out, Weatherby does have very long throats (Freebore) and for good reason. In order to impress everyone with the massive amounts of powder he crams into those cases, he has to have a "pressure release valve" somewhere and that is the freebore. If you were to fire those cartridges in a Weatherby .340 and chronograph them and then load a heavy but safe charge in your rifle and chronograph it, I would venture to say that the velocities would be nearly the same. I don't buy into the Weatherby mistique as you may have guessed. I do, however, believe that the .340 is one of his better offerings, along with the 7 M/M WM.

Fixed it....

Chamber was to smooth. I usually don't do anything to my chambers after I ream them but this one turned out so smooth the case didn't have any grip. Chucked it up and hit with some 320 and it was fine.