28 Nosler LAW Firing Issues

Recently a friend of mine had a Legendary Arms Works rifle rebarreled from a 26 Nosler to a 28 Nosler. When he received the rifle back and we took it to the range it shot great for the first fifteen rounds then would no longer fie any more. The firing pin hits the primers and actually puts a pretty good intrusions into the primer but it does not go off. I also have a Legendary Arms rifle in 26 Nosler so we swapped bolts to see I there was an issue with the firing assembly. My bolt would not fire his rifle either. I put his bolt in my rifle and it fired just fine. We contacted the gun smith that did the rebarreling and he said that Nosler brass is slightly shorter than the SAAMI specs and that his chamber is .003 longer than the minimum spec. This could be the issue. We measure his cases with a head space comparator and they are all slightly shorter than specified but why would the first fifteen shoot and then nothing. More importantly how do you fix it? He recommended trying brass from ADG as it would probably be closer to the SAAMI specification for the cartridge. My main question is this. Should the rifle be sent back to the gunsmith and the .003 extra length be removed from the barrel so he can shoot factory ammo if he desires to or should my buddy just keep looking to find cases that will fit his chamber. Sorry I shoot a lot but I am not up to par when it comes to all of the details of precision shooting and loading and all of the jargon. If my post reads like a twelve year old wrote it I apologize. Any help or advice anyone can give would be much appreciated.

If it was me I would send it back and have it set for factory ammo, one day you might need to shoot some. And have the smith give it a good going through, strange that it fired 15 then stopped.
Have you pulled the firing pin assembly out and had a look at it?

LongBomber said:

If it was me I would send it back and have it set for factory ammo, one day you might need to shoot some. And have the smith give it a good going through, strange that it fired 15 then stopped.
Have you pulled the firing pin assembly out and had a look at it?

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Yes we did. Nothing appears to be out of the normal. We even measured it against the firing pin from my action and they are identical, at least from what we could read with the tools we have.

If what the gunsmith is saying is correct ( go gauge plus .003") that should be fine, the NO GO is .006" longer. But it sounds like its more than .003" to me. Try measuring a piece of fired brass to show how much the brass is growing from the first firing. Sounds like excessive headspace to me.

Actually most go and no go gauges are .003 apart.

I struggled with this issue on a TL action (the same action used on the LAW) rifles. The bore for the firing pin was too tight on the firing pin and it would drag, slowing down the firing pin. So while the protrusion on the firing pin was good and the primer impact was good the force needed to ignite the primer wasnt. The more this one was shot the worse it was too. I had to turn down the diameter of the stop on the front of the firing pin. A cheap action that turned into a massive headache to figure out, which made it not even close to worth the cost. BTW if you dry fired the gun you could hear the difference. A good one would make a loud snap and the bad one was a dull thud.

my gauges from JGS are .006" apart

My belted magnum go gauge is.220 and the no go is .223. Several of my others are the same way.

The go and field gauge are .010 apart, there is no saami spec on the gauge print for a no go which manufacture put somewhere in the middle. That's why most base everything of a go gauge since the no go is basically arbitrary.

I would lean to firing pin drag, strip the bolt and clean it, it takes a bit more than a few thou headspace issue to have ignition problems.

Isn't it a bad idea to be swapping bolts like that?...who knows what that's doing to head space...

but I'd send it back and make sure it's capable of firing factory ammunition

naja302 said:

Isn't it a bad idea to be swapping bolts like that?...who knows what that's doing to head space...

but I'd send it back and make sure it's capable of firing factory ammunition

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I'm not sure, it was a quick way to tell if the issue was with the bolt. Since both firearms were Legendary Arms and originally they were both 26 Noslers I figured if it worked in one it should work in the other. Maybe kind of backwoods thinking but it worked.

Actually I swapped bolts in several of the actions and it appears that is one thing TL got right. The headspace was under .001 change between them.

Allen Kitts said:

I'm not sure, it was a quick way to tell if the issue was with the bolt. Since both firearms were Legendary Arms and originally they were both 26 Noslers I figured if it worked in one it should work in the other. Maybe kind of backwoods thinking but it worked.

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that kind of thing will get you killed

John 264 said:

that kind of thing will get you killed

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Ok so please explain to me how. The rifle was the exact same model rifle In the exact same caliber. The second rifle was just rebarreled. Nothing changed on the bolt. Since they are a production rifle I would assume they would have roughly the same dimensional data from the front to the rear. they both lock up in the identical manner on the action. Please understand I am not arguing with you I am trying to understand your logic.
Thanks,

Allen Kitts said:

Ok so please explain to me how. The rifle was the exact same model rifle In the exact same caliber. The second rifle was just rebarreled. Nothing changed on the bolt. Since they are a production rifle I would assume they would have roughly the same dimensional data from the front to the rear. they both lock up in the identical manner on the action. Please understand I am not arguing with you I am trying to understand your logic.
Thanks,

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I think he was just standing by the long standing unspoken rule that you dont swap bolts between rifles. I doubt two rifles from the same builder in the same caliber and same brand action would be far enough apart to be catastrophic, but when it comes to 60,000 cup , better to not chance it.