I just had a .270 Gibbs, 26" Pac-nor stainless straight taper barrel installed on my Browning A-bolt. When I fireformed some cases they got shorter. Is this normal? I used new 30.06 Win. brass necked to .270 Gibbs, Win. LR primers and 59gr. of H4831. Does anyone have suggestions for some loads. I'm going to use 150 gr. bullets exclusively and had the reamer built on a dummy round with a Nosler partition bullet seated as far out as possible and still fit in the magazine. I'm an old guy but fairly new at reloading.

What you might try is using a 280Rem or a 270 Win case. Load the emty case into chamber without trimming it and see if you can jam the case into the neck/throat transition for a tight fit. If you can all is well. If you know the exact chamber lenght trim the caes .020 longer than that. Load the case with about 25% of the water case volume by weight with 700X shotgun powder and fill the rest of the case with cream of wheat. You may have to add a bit more powder to get a good expansion. I use Crisco to keept the C.O.W from falling out. Fire them like that and then do the final trim. Fred M.

Free miner-Thanks for your quick response. I was suprised when the brass got shorter because the old Gibbs book I read said to use 30.06 cases or trim cases .270 cases to 2.494"(30.06 length). I thought that since the 30.06 neck was created by necking down the case from .441 (or there about) that the copper for the expansion would come the previously necked down case. The .270 Gibbs case is supposed to be 2.5" long so I expected the case to get longer since the Gibbs book says to trim to 2.494. Like I said I'm new to reloading wildcats. I'm really more concerned about working up a load. For example the old Gibbs book shows a max load for the 150 gr. bullet of 56 gr of IMR-4831. I've seen loads on other web sites that say the max. load for the 150 gr. bullet to be 66 gr. of IMR-4831. To me 10 grains is a big spread! I will work up very slowly as you suggested.