I was shooting my Remington 788 in .222 this weekend using Igman ammo that I ordered from AIM Surplus. (I ordered Prvi Partizan but that's a whole different story.)

Anyway, I noticed that about 50% of the time, I really had to use some force to close the bolt on the 788. I also noticed that when I ejected the cartridge, the mouth of it was a bit flattened on on side. It almost looked like a sloppy "D".

I didn't have any other ammo to try at the time but I'm curious to hear if people think this might be a problem with the gun such as the bolt or the chamber or is this bad ammo?

Thanks!

The rapid test would be to try some other factory ammo first. The mouth being shaped like a D is a function of the extraction/ejection in most instances. Try ejecting very slowly, to just drop in your hand, there shouldn't be any case deformation.

The bolt is hard to close if there's either something wrong with the ammo being out-of-spec of something wrong causing the chamber to be out-of-spec. If it doesn't seem right have it checked out BEFORE you fire it again as either of these issues could lead to injury or death--definately not worth risking.

Ejected case mouths can be dented when the empty case clears the barrel breech and the ejector slams the case up against the reciever front ring. The amount of deformation is relative to speed of extraction, strength of ejector spring and hardness of brass. This deformation is hardly ever indicative of a problem.

Hope this helps.

I was opening the bolt slowly. In fact, a couple of times, the brass seemed to stick to the bolt.

There were a few rounds that chambered just fine.

All fired OK.

I'm going to make a "dummy" round tonight "in spec" and see how it chambers and ejects and hopefully provide more insight.

Some benchresters shorten or replace the ejector spring to avoid the dinged case mouth.
If you look closely at a lot of M700s the stock will be dinged at the rear of the ejection port where the rapidly flipping case hits the stock on ejection... also caused by an overly strong ejector spring.

Seemed to be OK last night after a good cleaning.

Quick question - On the bold face there is a small "rod" that comes out that would obviously fall against the cartridge. It is not the ejector and for lack on knowledge I really don't know what it is.

If that was sticky or gummed up, could that be causing the problem?

How hard is it to disassemble and reassemble the bolt?

Thanks again for the feedback.

The only "rod" on the boltface is the ejector. It's retained with a pin through the bolt and is powered by a spring.

quote:

Originally posted by Toomany Tools:
The only "rod" on the boltface is the ejector. It's retained with a pin through the bolt and is powered by a spring.

You're right. I meant to say extractor in my last post.

I was cycling some dummy rounds through it and it appears to be a brass issue.

Gonna shoot it this weekend and if I still have problems, then I'm done with this Igman ammo.

Well, I have an update: https://forums.accuratereloading.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/2511043/m/256104796

Turns out it wasn't the gun at all.