Thanks all.
It is sad that A-Square still does not have its act together. I took the ammo back to the dealer and he is sending all his stock of that ridiculously priced stuff back to CZ, who will have to take it out of A-Square's hide.

I even tried the .404 Jeffery ammo that Darrel had from CZ and it was a serious effort to close the bolt on a round. The .505 Gibbs ammo is impossible to close the bolt on.

Both of these rifles chamber properly sized brass with no problems.

The CZ Safari ammo loaded by A-Square is NOT safari ammo by any means.

Cool pics. Thanks for sharing. B~)

quote:

Originally posted by Art S.:
No experience with the 505, but you might check the neck thickness on the brass. I've had this problem on both Bertram and A-Square. Some 425 WR Bertram cases I got recently would chamber in the rifle when empty, but when I loaded a bullet, it would no longer chamber. I put and extra heavy crimp on, and it chambered. A check of the case necks showed they were pretty thick, and the .001 or so difference with the bullet tension was enough to cause them not to chamber. I've noticed this is a common problem with a lot of the specialty makers.

Art S,
What you are saying makes sense, but in this case it is not the problem.

The .505 loads from A-Square scour and scratch the brass circumferentially on the head of the brass (just forward of the extractor groove on the case) and on the shoulders. They are too big in diameter at both the base and too long in the head space, for my rifle.

Pulling the bullets and resizing the case then reloading the same A-Square bullets (or a Bridger) then allows the ammo to be chambered.

My resizing dies by RCBS fix the oversize problem simply as that.

With the .404 Jeffery A-Square ammo, closing the bolt hard marks up the cases only on the shoulder area of the cartridge, so those are only slightly too long in headspace, but the camming of the bolt is enough to crush it into the chamber. Again, my sizing dies size brass perfectly for both of my .404's, and there is no problem with the CZ rifle.

The .505 Gibbs is impossible to close the bolt on. Looking at the bolt face pictured, you will see that I tried hard enough to smear brass off the base of the case onto the bolt face, in a complete ring aroiund the firing pin hole.

The A-square ammo is oversize from the factory, in both headspace length and head diameter ... I don't have a too tight chamber if my sizing die makes the brass work, eh?

Stryker225,
You are welcome.

If you look at the picture of the .505 bolt face

Rip,
I think your earlier post may have been on to something with the wrong chamber dimensions. A friend has the same CZ in 505 and was having a similar problem. His A-Square ammo dropped into the go/no-go chamber just fine but the bolt would not close on a go gauge, it was not cut deep enough. He called CZ but I do not know what the resolution was. Just an idea.

quote:

Originally posted by redleg172:
Rip,
I think your earlier post may have been on to something with the wrong chamber dimensions. A friend has the same CZ in 505 and was having a similar problem. His A-Square ammo dropped into the go/no-go chamber just fine but the bolt would not close on a go gauge, it was not cut deep enough. He called CZ but I do not know what the resolution was. Just an idea.

Another problem with A-Square ammo in a CZ .505 Gibbs rifle?

But if I pull the bullets and full-length size the A-Square brass in RCBS dies (with significant pressure required on the press arm), then it works fine.

Maybe the CZ chamber is minimum spec by CIP, but I think the ammo is over max spec. Probably a .505 Gibbs should have some slop built into the chamber.

We'll see. If anything it would be easy to run a reamer in another .001".