i've noticed on my last few loads i'm getting a tight bolt close. my first thought was "time to trim" but even after trimming it still is tight. any thoughts on what this could be? the brass is all old Dominion manufacture, but has only been loaded 3 times, all with min. loads the firearm in question is a rebarreled Norwegian Krag-Jorgensen

quote:

Originally posted by kevin.303:
I've noticed on my last few loads I'm getting a tight bolt close.

Before or after firing?
.

'bump' the shoulder back a thou or 3. might fix the problem.

Is there any chance you could have a problem with brass flowing into the neck area from the shoulder? Try slipping a bullet into a fired case before you resize them & see if it slides in freely or not. If it is tighter just before the shoulder then you might need to look at neck reaming to free it up.
Steve

Might be time to anneal the old brass.

All good ideas. i ran into that many years ago when I was loading the 6.5x54MS. it turned out that the seating die was turned down just a bit tii much and the shoulders on the brass got oushed in a bit which kept the shells from chambering. That was my bad learning how to set up the dies for a new round way back when.
it could be you nee to trim a bit as maybe the necks just might be engaging the seater's crimp area.
Paul B.

Kevin< are you trying to crimp these cartridges ? I'm thinking of cases spreading (mushroom) at the body to shoulder junction. Happens to me every couple of years or so. roger

When I was into "notalgia shooting" with my old 1903 I got at Kenya Bunduki in the 50s I used some old Dominion brass I had here. Much the same problems you are having. I switched over to some Norma I have and everything was fine. Maybe just old brass? Tired out? Might try another brand.
Aloha, Mark

no i'm not trying to crimp it, and yes i think it just might be tired old brass. Norma is not cheap here in Canada, $70 a bag, while the Cabelas 2 hours south in North Dakota has it for a third of that, but they won't ship!! i might just have to pay the higher price, deer hunting is 3 months away, and i'm in the middle of load development.

Wot Pegleg said, try annealing them before giving up on them. There have been some good threads recently on this.
Steve

Good dissertation on reloading the 6.5x54mm!
I've loaded this round for over thirty years and have most often seen this occurence in Dominion brass and the old US made brass, only rarely with Norma brass and never with expensive RWS brass. In my own experience, I've found that the issue was either stretching or reloading dies in need of reseating. This is not a high pressure cartridge. One other item that may be a player is the chamber itself. I have encountered non-standard chambers, possibly just badly worn in the case of a commercial M1903, but still so badly out of tolerance that the brass was next to impossible to resize after only one firing with now traditional overpressure signs. Strange things can happen in chambers!

head space problem.

Try the sized case in you chamber before you load them. Try to determine if the drag is on the body or the shoulder. If it is on the shoulder you should be able to adjust the sizer die downward until they will chamber. Once they camber you can proceed to load. If they are then tight after seating a bullet your seater will need to be backed up.
It is unlikely your cases are binding at the mouth. Mannlicher chambers are about .040 (1mm) longer than the brass.

To recap:
Size your cases until they fit
Then load them.

A young fella loaded up his first rounds for his brand new 6.5x55 and the first one he chambered, jammed. Run-out on that long bullet!

I've been playing around with the rimmed version, the 6.5x53R lately. I also had chambering difficultys with previously easy to chamber rounds. I found the cause to be some brass flow into the base of the neck area. That caused the expander button to pull the shoulder forward just a tiny bit upon expanding them and they either wouldn't chamber or would with some difficulty. I inside neck reamed the cases, resized once again and the problem went away. I found the problem when a bullet inserted into a fired case would not go past the lower portion of the neck as Shinzo already posted here. All my loads are far under max for this caliber.

turns out my dies wheren't screwed in quite right. put em in properly, bumped back the shoulder and now they feed slicker then deer guts on a door knob!