Resized brass very hard to chamber

[midgetorama32]

I sold my Winchester Coyote 22-250 years ago and recently picked up another Custom model 70 in 22-250. I ran some of my old brass through the full length sizer and tried to chamber them before reloading them. They would chamber but it took a lot of effort to close the bolt and there looks to be some obvious wear and rubbing just in front of the webbing of the brass. Brand new brass chambers much easier. The fired brass had been fired about 4-5 times and was used with a pretty hot load of H380 and 52 gr A-maxes. I had flat primers and decent cratering after a firing.

Anyone know what gives? All I can figure is that this custom gun has a smaller chamber than my die will allow for.

Thoughts on what to do?

Thanks.

 

[Jinx-)]

I noticed this trend once, when I made handloads for my friend using my once fired brass, the only difference I had chamber made by TC PH and his was by Tikka T3 Tactical, so when he tried to chamber them it took some force, after firing two rounds he gave up on my loads, but the brass fired through his chamber fire-formed it and it was fine. When I full sized his brass for my chamber I never had any issues... It looks like every manufacture got their specs differently, although within SAAMI

 

[Mikecr]

SAAMI is very sloppy. Whole lotta tolerances both directions there.
Just buy new brass and fire form to your chamber..

It seems crazy to me(probably just me), that you expect turning a fully formed cartridge(your coyote 22-250) into another(your model 70, 22-250) -just by running it through a SAAMI FL die.
I guess the reason it seems so is that MY luck would never allow me to just 'wing it' like this.

 

[trueblue]

I would just buy 100pcs of new brass.
New rifle=new brass

 

[Jinx-)]

Thinking back, sorry I made a mistake in the post above, the brass which I used for my friend's Tikka was never fired, it was sorted batch which I annealed and turned. So it was virgin brass which wouldn't chamber after I sized it with FL RCBS, maybe some of the wax remained in the die, but I had never encountered such...

 

[midgetorama32]

My biggest concern is this die's compatability with the new gun. Will it be able to size it down enough after a few firings?

Thanks.

 

[BountyHunter]

Thinking back, sorry I made a mistake in the post above, the brass which I used for my friend's Tikka was never fired, it was sorted batch which I annealed and turned. So it was virgin brass which wouldn't chamber after I sized it with FL RCBS, maybe some of the wax remained in the die, but I had never encountered such...

IF you bump the shoulder too much it can make a small invisible ring that sticks out and that will make it hard or impossible to chamber.

BH

 

[Jinx-)]

You think that it could be shoulder bumps? But I had never use this brass before and after my friend refused it, I shot them all through my action, where I didn't encounter any issues.

upps feels like I'm hijacking this thread...

 

[BowElkStalker]

I ran into the same problem. I have a new savage model 12 VLP .243 and tried to chamber a FL sized fired case and it was very tight closing the bolt. Here are a few measurments I took. You can see that the fired case is less than what a standard case is supposed to be yet is very tight in my gun?

454 dia. at the shoulder out of the Hornady manual
.470 dia. at the base of the body

.447 dia. at the shoulder new factory round
.466 dia. at the base of the body

.448 dia. at the shoulder new case FL sized
.467 dia. at the base of the body

.451 dia. at the shoulder fired case FL sized
.469 dia. at the base of the body

 

[Jinx-)]

I just remeasured brass the thing is FL sized brass is bellow SAAMI specs which are
SAAMI
0.455" - 0.470"
and FL sized virgin brass
0.450" .0467"
fired brass from my rifle
0.457" .0467"
fired brass from his rifle
0.456 .0467

so chamber with 0.456" - .0467" should had accept FL sized brass 0.450" .0467", but it didn't, this is all Remington brass for .308

the post above is a bit incorrect about measurements, they are not taken at the shoulders but at the body of brass close to the shoulders, the shoulder measurements by SAAMI for .243 is 0.400 same as in .308, parent case ;-)

my conclusion is that only shoulders of the brass could interfere, since body of FL sized brass is bellow specs of the chamber, but I have no way to measure shoulders correctly because of the lack of the equipment, I know Sinclair makes nice tools and probably others

 

[mo]

I've never had to run virgin brass through a sizing die.

 

[Mikecr]

+1 MO
The first sizing is done by my chamber with fireforming.

 

[Jinx-)]

I full size, doesn't matter if I'll buy once fired bras or virgin brass, it all goes through same process, annealed, full sized neck turned. I don't FL size factory brass fired from my riffle for another 4 - 5 cycles.