I posted this in gunsmithing as well, but figured I might get some answers here as well. I built this rifle for the Sporting Rifle match in Raton. Just got the barrel back from the smith and now have ran into some feeding issues.

I built a Stevens 200 center feed action into a long range .243 Win 1:7 twist to run bullets up to 115 grains. I can seat the bullets out to 2.8" and still get them to fit in the magazine. However when I seat bullets to this COAL, the bolt head rides overtop the cartridge. If I seat the bullets to 2.6" or less COAL my problem goes away but then my bullet isn't even coming close to the lands, and is eating up powder room.

The problem is once the cartridge starts to angle up into the chamber, it is as such an angle the rim of the cartridge slips under the bolt. Is there any way I can tweak the magazine to cure this problem? I really don't want to operate this rifle as a single shot.

My other question would something like CDI bottom metal which allows the use of Accuracy International magazines fix my problem? I had planned to upgrade the stock and change out the blind mag for the detachable style in the future. However if I can't get things to work properly from the factory magazine I might have to speed up the upgrade process.

It's called a dremmel. Sometime you can take a little metal off the inside of the magazine to give yourself a little more bullet clearance.

I had a similar problem with my 223 Stevens when I first got it. Mine was not cartridge length dependent, but would do it on any round I tried to feed from the magazine.

On mine, the feed lips on the magazine were too close together at the rear of the mag. It would not allow the back end of the cartridge to stick up enough for the bolt head to pick it up.

I merely bent out the feed lips, carefully, a little bit at a time, until the problem was eliminated.

You might give that a try, just go easy on it.