?????Pressure Signs?????

bkelectricinc

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Feb 12, 2017
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Occasionally I have trouble opening the bolt on my gun after firing. I have been full length resizing. The primmers are slightly flattening as well. I have tried numerous recipes with not a great deal of luck. Mostly seating bullets .010 off the lands. Its a 1:11 twist 23" Kimber Super America. I have been shooting 5 and then cleaning. Bottom metal screws are 40 inch pounds.
 
Are you having trouble lifting the bolt handle, or pulling the bolt back and pulling the empty cartridge out of the chamber? These could mean 2 different things.

If your having trouble pulling your bolt back, look at your case body for scratches. It's possible you may have a rough chamber, and your brass is adhering to the chamber walls so firmly that it is difficult to extract the cartridge from the chamber.

If you are having trouble lifting your bolt handle, does your case heads have a shiny spot on them? Look at the picture I posted, mainly at the shiny mark on the left side of the case head. Does any of your brass have these? If so, your loads are overpressure and need to be backed off some. Also, if your primer pockets are loose after just 2 or 3 loadings, you are also overpressure. Look for small black spots around your primer, this may indicate carbon leaking past your primer, also a sign of overpressure. Primer cratering, like in the image, can also be a sign of overpressure, but may also just be a sign of not having the best fit between your firing pin and firing pin hole in the bolt face.

I'll just throw a couple more things in, I only full length resize every time if I'm loading for a semi auto. If it's for a bolt gun, I neck size until it starts getting snug, then I only bump the shoulder .003"-.005". This will make your brass last the longest, not overwork it and help prevent head case separations. Hornady makes a shoulder bump gauge that works quite well.

And one more thing, cleaning every 5 rounds is ok if your just breaking in a brand new rifle, but is not a good practice to continually do, cleaning your rifle is not totally benign, and if not done properly can seriously damage the rifling and crown, and will wear on it even if it is done properly. I'm not saying never clean your rifle, but try to clean only when necessary. I will clean my rifle when groups with a known accurate load start opening up, or in my case, about every 200-250 rounds. After that, I use Hoppes first to get the carbon fouling out, then Sweets 7.62 to get the copper fouling out. My first round after a thorough cleaning will strike about 4 MOA low at 1000 yards, but after one fouling round, I'm good to go for a while.

Other exceptions are if my rifle gets rained on, I will do a light cleaning, wipe the outside down with a gun oiled rag, then one pass through the bore with a Hoppes soaked patch, then a dry patch or 2 to ensure the bore is dry. You don't want to overclean your bore, this will shorten the life of your rifles accuracy. If you are one of those guys that HAS to clean after every outing, try to just run a bore snake through one pass.

Hope this helps!!
 

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Have you measured your fired cases?
Hace you tried dropping a bullet into a fired case to make sure you don't have carbon build up in the chamber?
Are you sure your fl sizing? (measuring fired and sized cases)
Did you check your head spacing?
Did you check neck tension?
Are you shooting any reloaded ammo that is more than a few months old? (this was my problem when I had the same issue) Old reloaded ammo can cause major problems.

There's a few things to look at.
 
Try factory match ammo. See if you still have the problem?

308 Win.? Give load data.

Cleaning every 5 round may leave a wet chamber. This may produce more bolt thrust.

Brass- The difference between brass brands may produce high pressure , using some load data.
 
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Old Ammo ?

Are you shooting any reloaded ammo that is more than a few months old? (this was my problem when I had the same issue) Old reloaded ammo can cause major problems.
I have never heard that one before??? Reloaded ammo more than a few months old goes bad? Please explain...


Cold welding maybe?? I want to know more also. Ty.

I would guess , cold welding would not raise pressure a whole lot? Maybe some? Not the OP's problem.
 
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Another thing you could try, is to back the bullet off the lands at least .020 and increase it as accuracy dictates. (Some chambers are short throated and drive pressure up.

If you are shooting secant Ojive bullets, sometimes they like lots of bullet jump.

Just a thought

J E CUSTOM
 
Good advice above with lots to consider. The only thing I will add is if possible shoot with a chronograph on your next outing if possible. That is perhaps the best way to know if your load is a bit too hot for your gun. If your MV is above published max MV, then your pressure is too high for some reason. High MV = High Chamber Pressure. That is the primary reason I use a chronograph in load development, to know if my load is getting a bit hot. If environmental factors allow my chronograph to work correctly, the data from it just confirms what I see on my target.

FWIW
 
I'm sure that some will disagree, but I have had this happen a couple times.

I Loaded about 100 rounds for my 280ai and only got through about 20 before I got distracted with a new rille, so it and the ammo sat in the safe for close to a year. I had a great load worked up with 168 vld's. It would consistently shoot 3" groups at 500 and it's a fairly light rifle. Anyway, I decided to get it back out and wanted to go verify my data before taking it hunting, so I took it to the 500 yard target and everything fell apart. I was getting flyers up to 8" high about 1 out of 5 would do that. Then I noticed that about 1 out of 5 of the fired cases had a pretty pronounced ejector mark. ES was almost 100fps. This is not a hot load (58 gr 4831sc). So I called my gunsmith.
The very first question he asked was " how old is the ammo?" I told him it was about a year old, to which he replied "there's your problem"

He suggested putting them in the press and seating the bullet in about .005 more. So I did, and about 1 out of every 5 resisted and had an audible click when bullet separated from the neck. They went right back to shooting 3" groups, problem solved.

Then the same thing happened to a friend of mines 300 wsm, but his ammo was a few years old. It destroyed several pieces of brass, way over pressure, so I did the same thing. Some of the bullets were bonded to the point that it the seating die dented the bullets before they broke loose from the case.

My gunsmith said that this is one of the most common reasons that accuracy falls off. He said he gets several calls every year right before hunting season about accuracy issues and this is the problem 90% of time with "hunters", "shooters don't ever have ammo sitting around that long"
 
Hmmm, I have never had that issue before. Then again, my ammo doesn't sit around that long ha ha. I wonder if it's from case lube inside the neck adhering to the bullet and forming a kind of glue....After sizing, I always clean out the necks of my brass with q tips prior to dumping powder to ensure they are clean. Not sure if this is what causes it, just a thought.
 
I don't want to change the direction here, but, I don't understand
this "old ammo" phenomenon at all.

Cold welding ? None of my stacked up steel supply does that. None of
my iron car parts do that. None of the kitchen utensils in storage do that.

Next question would be: If this is actually happening, how is it prevented ?

For example, I would guess that HBN-coated bullets don't "stick" to the case.

If it's not "cold welding" but chemical corrosion, that I could buy.

I'm willing to learn here.
 
I would question how reloaded ammo can cause cold welding. if that were the case, think about the billions of rounds sitting in retail stores waiting to be shot.
 
I have experienced flattened primers yet no stiff bolt and no expanded primer pockets with the brass lasting 8+ cycles. So I consider that the expanded primer pockets, stiff bolt, and a faint stretch line near the head are more trustworthy symptoms of pressure. The big tell is the stiff bolt; you know it right then and there, and there's no nuance to it.
 
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