choprzrul
Well-Known Member
New to me, supposed to be unfired or very low round count Ruger #1 in 25-06 mfg circa 1978. Fired about 65 new Hornady brass to get them fire formed and to make certain the barrel is getting broke in.....more to be fired later, I simply ran out of time at the range.
Anyway, I tumbled and annealed the brass, deprimed, ran some of them through a Redding body die to bump the shoulder 0.003", ran them through a Lee collet type neck sizer die, and then trimmed to length.
Figured I'd verify they fit the chamber since the rifle, brass, and dies were all new to me. They don't fit??? What the heck? Some of them lack 1/4" of going into the chamber....but then I found one that slipped in fairly easy??
I went looking VERY carefully at those brass and noticed that if I rotated one in my hand, I could feel 'bumps' or 'ridges' as it rotated....like the chamber had fire formed the brass into a rounded octagon. Just for giggles, I ran one piece back through the sizing die and now I can see the lines on the brass....as you can hopefully see in the picture below...kinda blurry but the dark lines running the length of the case are the ridges.
Has anyone seen something like this before? The lines appear to be high points in the brass, so that means the chamber must have 8 low points in it allowing the brass to expand out to meet the chamber?
For clarity, I have new unfired brass from the same batch/order that do not have the ridges. I have some of those same fired brass that have not been through the sizing die that do have the ridges, and the sized ones have the ridges.....so this tells me it must not be a brass problem, but rather it's happening in the chamber when fired.
Where do I go from here??? I would think the Redding body die should squeeze that brass down to where it would fit no matter what. Some of the brass, if I rotate it, will eventually slide into the chamber, but it's a pretty narrow window for success.
Anyway, I tumbled and annealed the brass, deprimed, ran some of them through a Redding body die to bump the shoulder 0.003", ran them through a Lee collet type neck sizer die, and then trimmed to length.
Figured I'd verify they fit the chamber since the rifle, brass, and dies were all new to me. They don't fit??? What the heck? Some of them lack 1/4" of going into the chamber....but then I found one that slipped in fairly easy??
I went looking VERY carefully at those brass and noticed that if I rotated one in my hand, I could feel 'bumps' or 'ridges' as it rotated....like the chamber had fire formed the brass into a rounded octagon. Just for giggles, I ran one piece back through the sizing die and now I can see the lines on the brass....as you can hopefully see in the picture below...kinda blurry but the dark lines running the length of the case are the ridges.
Has anyone seen something like this before? The lines appear to be high points in the brass, so that means the chamber must have 8 low points in it allowing the brass to expand out to meet the chamber?
For clarity, I have new unfired brass from the same batch/order that do not have the ridges. I have some of those same fired brass that have not been through the sizing die that do have the ridges, and the sized ones have the ridges.....so this tells me it must not be a brass problem, but rather it's happening in the chamber when fired.
Where do I go from here??? I would think the Redding body die should squeeze that brass down to where it would fit no matter what. Some of the brass, if I rotate it, will eventually slide into the chamber, but it's a pretty narrow window for success.
