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243 Win. loaded way to hot.
EhlerDave
Member Posts: 5,158 ✭✭
One of my son's friends asked if I could check his rifle. Savage 243 win. He told me with factory loads it will shoot " a nice small group" but with the reloads his Dad got from a friend he cant hit a 4x8 sheet of plywood at 100 yards.
He gave me 20 empty cases and 4 loaded rounds that would not fit in his rifle. The empties have bad signs of over pressure. Small clues like the primers are poking out, most have the firing pin dent poked back out like a small nipple, a few primers fell out when I ran them through my tumbler. I would guess that a new primer is not going to fit so well in them. About half of them have an odd looking round "bump" on the end of the case, where it is marked 243 win, took me a bit to figure out that is the hole on the bolt face for the ejector. I had never seen a case quite like that before. I have suggested he toss all the cases in the scrap bucket.
The 4 loaded rounds I pulled down, first thing I found was all 4 of them had the bullet loose in the case. You could spin it with ease. I am guessing they did not get resized properly and this is why they would not fit in his chamber. I have no clue what powder these are loaded with but all 4 had the same charge of 38.5gr.
Not sure who loaded these, but again people dont shoot a load if you dont know and trust the loader.
He gave me 20 empty cases and 4 loaded rounds that would not fit in his rifle. The empties have bad signs of over pressure. Small clues like the primers are poking out, most have the firing pin dent poked back out like a small nipple, a few primers fell out when I ran them through my tumbler. I would guess that a new primer is not going to fit so well in them. About half of them have an odd looking round "bump" on the end of the case, where it is marked 243 win, took me a bit to figure out that is the hole on the bolt face for the ejector. I had never seen a case quite like that before. I have suggested he toss all the cases in the scrap bucket.
The 4 loaded rounds I pulled down, first thing I found was all 4 of them had the bullet loose in the case. You could spin it with ease. I am guessing they did not get resized properly and this is why they would not fit in his chamber. I have no clue what powder these are loaded with but all 4 had the same charge of 38.5gr.
Not sure who loaded these, but again people dont shoot a load if you dont know and trust the loader.
Just smile and say nothing, let them guess how much you know.
Comments
There are three nevers that apply to handloads . NEVER , NEVER , NEVER shoot someone elses handloads !!!
Yep.
I was at a gun auction 2 weeks ago. They had some .243 & .270 rounds and I mean ALOT.
Noone would give an opening bid and auctioneer got pissed & said these were worth alot of money & could figure out why noone was bidding.
I shouted back at him,"Because no one wants their head blown off![xx(] You don't shoot reloads if you don't know who made them or were they come from!"
Everyone around the wagon just chuckled.
Someone did end up buying them all. Good luck, I say.[;)]
Another thing to consider too is resizing brass to a 'third' rifle. I pick up 'once fired' brass all the time, clean it, and reload it. Once I shoot it, that's now the second rifle. After it's been sized to the 'second rifle', I never let the brass go to a 'third rifle'. Meaning firing it in yet another rifle. With the different headspacing and chamber dimensions, combined with the work hardening process brass goes through while reloading, you may end up with serious case issues. Incipient head separation is one very common and very dangerous effect of doing this.
Re-size brass once to another rifle, after that scrap it. Even though pressures may be mild as some hand-loaders do, they are still way too high if it gets out the back of the case. And, FWIW, I found this out on my own, the wrong way. My .257 and 7x57 rifles have identical looking bolts. I accidentally swapped them. All of my 7x57 cases from the next batch had that ring right at the web that showed they were about to come apart. One did finally, and with hot gasses spewing out the side of the rifle I really had to do a "sit-down, re-think" on my point of view on reloading safety. Not just that issue, but all issues. I no longer load for multiple rifles with the same brass.