Hey fellas, I loaded up a couple small batches of .243 recently and finally got the chance to ladder test them today....sorta. I ran across a problem and I can't figure it out, hoping somebody has an idea and hopefully a solution. Here's the chain of events, including each step.
1) I started with 100 rounds of once fired factory brass...some Federal, some Remington and some Barnes. I cleaned them in the vibratory tumbler for several hours, then full length resized/deprimed them following the instructions for my Hornady die set (brand new, first time I had ever used it). I ended up with 96 pieces of brass after inspecting each piece.
2) Once resized, I touched up each primer pocket with a primer pocket reamer and chamfered/deburred the case mouths.
3) I reprimed all brass.
4) I charged one round at a time, with an incrementally increasing powder charge.
5) After putting powder in a casing, I took that casing to the press and seated a 95gr Hornady SST, and set the COAL to 2.710 (max per the cartridge specs in my Speer manual, more on that later)
6) I kept them sorted into two boxes (one box for each of two rifles) and in order as I loaded incrementally heavier charges.
This morning, I took the rounds and rifles to the local range to do a ladder test. I started with the Rossi single shot and had no real problems, the bullets landed in a vertical string, just as expected, a touch of side to side, but nothing major and a nice group of three loads that had less than 1/2" of vertical dispersion at 100 yards, that's where I'm going to start my group testing. I did notice on a couple or maybe three rounds, that the hammer was a little difficult to pull back, but nothing major, and I figured the rifle just needed a good cleaning. There were zero signs of pressure problems even on the hottest load, and chambering and extraction were smooth. I then proceeded with the Remington 700, same test...except I didn't get to fire even a single round....I couldn't get the first one to chamber fully. The bolt would close and the handle would start to rotate down, but would not lock in....something's not right. My first impression was that I got lucky and had a rifle with a short throat and seating to max COAL was putting the bullets into the lands, no big deal, I'll go home and find the location of the lands, then back the bullets up a little and try again. So, tonight, I did that, but it doesn't appear that I was touching the lands. Okay, so it's got to be a brass problem, maybe in resizing. So, I got a piece of resized and primed brass, with no powder or bullet....and it will chamber, but the bolt is TIGHT opening AND closing. Next piece of brass was better, but still sorta tight, and the third was normal. I tried several and some are tight, some are normal, very odd, and some won't chamber at all, just empty brass. I did the same thing with the Rossi, and on the ones that were tight in the Remington, the hammer was hard to pull back on the Rossi, and a couple the hammer wouldn't come back at all. These were all run through the same sizing die, and the only thing that is consistent is that the Barnes always function properly, the Federals and Remington are hit/miss. The only thing I can think of is maybe the shoulders didn't get bumped back enough on some, but then why would some be fine and some not fine? I don't understand. Maybe a grain of cleaning media got between the die and shell holder on a few, causing the resize function to not run the full length? One other possibility is that during resizing, I apparently didn't get a good coating of the Hornady One Shot spray lube on a few of the cases, (probably because they were too close together in the loading block) and I noticed when I raised the handle/lowered the ram, the expander ball was tight coming out of the case mouth. I suppose the expander could have stretched the dryer cases a bit, causing them to not chamber correctly. Any thoughts on that being a possibility?
Now, here's my problem, I have a bunch of primed brass ready to load....but apparently some of it is sized wrong....can it be resized with the primer in it? In other words, could I adjust the decap/expander pin up so that it doesn't punch the primer out, but still resizes the case? I've NEVER had this problem before, and I don't want to lose a bunch of good brass. What about the rounds I have still loaded....could I pull the decap pin completely out and resize them again with the bullet still in there? Is it safe to do this?
I promised more on the COAL set to max per spec: I've had really good luck with that, since 99.9% of factory rifles have long throats and setting to max COAL still doesn't put you anywhere near the lands. On every rifle I've tried, I can't get within .030 of the lands and still be within the max COAL specs. Not a big deal on a single shot, but on a magazine fed rifle, I want to use the magazine, so I just bump back to the max published in the book and roll with that and I've had no problems. Since I was testing loads on a single shot AND a magazine fed rifle, I figured I'd set them both the same so I didn't have to adjust the seating die during the loading session. Like I said, it's worked for me in the past with at least 4-5 other rifles, and seemed to work on the Rossi, and after this evening, I'm thinking it will work on the Remington too, if I can figure out this brass problem.
1) I started with 100 rounds of once fired factory brass...some Federal, some Remington and some Barnes. I cleaned them in the vibratory tumbler for several hours, then full length resized/deprimed them following the instructions for my Hornady die set (brand new, first time I had ever used it). I ended up with 96 pieces of brass after inspecting each piece.
2) Once resized, I touched up each primer pocket with a primer pocket reamer and chamfered/deburred the case mouths.
3) I reprimed all brass.
4) I charged one round at a time, with an incrementally increasing powder charge.
5) After putting powder in a casing, I took that casing to the press and seated a 95gr Hornady SST, and set the COAL to 2.710 (max per the cartridge specs in my Speer manual, more on that later)
6) I kept them sorted into two boxes (one box for each of two rifles) and in order as I loaded incrementally heavier charges.
This morning, I took the rounds and rifles to the local range to do a ladder test. I started with the Rossi single shot and had no real problems, the bullets landed in a vertical string, just as expected, a touch of side to side, but nothing major and a nice group of three loads that had less than 1/2" of vertical dispersion at 100 yards, that's where I'm going to start my group testing. I did notice on a couple or maybe three rounds, that the hammer was a little difficult to pull back, but nothing major, and I figured the rifle just needed a good cleaning. There were zero signs of pressure problems even on the hottest load, and chambering and extraction were smooth. I then proceeded with the Remington 700, same test...except I didn't get to fire even a single round....I couldn't get the first one to chamber fully. The bolt would close and the handle would start to rotate down, but would not lock in....something's not right. My first impression was that I got lucky and had a rifle with a short throat and seating to max COAL was putting the bullets into the lands, no big deal, I'll go home and find the location of the lands, then back the bullets up a little and try again. So, tonight, I did that, but it doesn't appear that I was touching the lands. Okay, so it's got to be a brass problem, maybe in resizing. So, I got a piece of resized and primed brass, with no powder or bullet....and it will chamber, but the bolt is TIGHT opening AND closing. Next piece of brass was better, but still sorta tight, and the third was normal. I tried several and some are tight, some are normal, very odd, and some won't chamber at all, just empty brass. I did the same thing with the Rossi, and on the ones that were tight in the Remington, the hammer was hard to pull back on the Rossi, and a couple the hammer wouldn't come back at all. These were all run through the same sizing die, and the only thing that is consistent is that the Barnes always function properly, the Federals and Remington are hit/miss. The only thing I can think of is maybe the shoulders didn't get bumped back enough on some, but then why would some be fine and some not fine? I don't understand. Maybe a grain of cleaning media got between the die and shell holder on a few, causing the resize function to not run the full length? One other possibility is that during resizing, I apparently didn't get a good coating of the Hornady One Shot spray lube on a few of the cases, (probably because they were too close together in the loading block) and I noticed when I raised the handle/lowered the ram, the expander ball was tight coming out of the case mouth. I suppose the expander could have stretched the dryer cases a bit, causing them to not chamber correctly. Any thoughts on that being a possibility?
Now, here's my problem, I have a bunch of primed brass ready to load....but apparently some of it is sized wrong....can it be resized with the primer in it? In other words, could I adjust the decap/expander pin up so that it doesn't punch the primer out, but still resizes the case? I've NEVER had this problem before, and I don't want to lose a bunch of good brass. What about the rounds I have still loaded....could I pull the decap pin completely out and resize them again with the bullet still in there? Is it safe to do this?
I promised more on the COAL set to max per spec: I've had really good luck with that, since 99.9% of factory rifles have long throats and setting to max COAL still doesn't put you anywhere near the lands. On every rifle I've tried, I can't get within .030 of the lands and still be within the max COAL specs. Not a big deal on a single shot, but on a magazine fed rifle, I want to use the magazine, so I just bump back to the max published in the book and roll with that and I've had no problems. Since I was testing loads on a single shot AND a magazine fed rifle, I figured I'd set them both the same so I didn't have to adjust the seating die during the loading session. Like I said, it's worked for me in the past with at least 4-5 other rifles, and seemed to work on the Rossi, and after this evening, I'm thinking it will work on the Remington too, if I can figure out this brass problem.
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