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Delta Elite 10MM
Member Posts: 839 ✭✭✭✭
Just starting out reloading and have a question for some of you duty experts out there. Loaded up 50 rounds of 7mm Remington yesterday and took them to the range today and I would say about 12 out of the 50 would not chamber in the rifle. By that I mean the bolt would not fully close and lock. Rifle is a Remington M700 ADL. The ones that I did fire produced nice groups and gave me no problems with pressure or extracting. I used once fired brass that I have been saving for the past few years before I got into reloading, all rounds finished C.O.L was 3.275" to be under the maximum C.O.L of 3.290" listed in the Hornady manual. They were all resized at the same time and the same way. Here is were I think I messed up, I did not measure or trim any of the brass before or after resizing. Is this were I am getting my problem from? If I buy a case trimmer and trim my cases to the case trim length in the manual will I avoid this problem again? Also when I measured some of the cases or the rounds that would chamber next to the ones that would not the C.O.L of all rounds were of course the same C.O.L and the cases themselves were very close, some of the ones that would chamber were even a shade longer then the ones that would not, what is this all about?
Comments
1. The brass could be too long. Trim the brass to length after you resize it. I use the Lee case trimmer. It is cheap and effective for small numbers of brass. I chuck one piece of the trimmer in my drill and hand hold the other piece.
2. You may not be setting the shoulder back properly. Confirm the setting of your resizing die. Will an empty, fired shell chamber pror to resizing? Will it chamber after decapping and resizing?
3. You may have a thick neck (not likely). Turn the necks of the resized case prior to completing the loading process. This is uncommon with factory shells and factory barrels.
4. If you are crimping the bullets, you may be over crimping and creating a bulge in the neck or shoulder of the case. You can often feel the bulge. Reset your crimp station.
5. You may be using the wrong diameter of bullets (not common in 7mm but possible). Check the diamter of the bullets with a caliper.
If you have some factory rounds, compare them dimensionally with your reloaded rounds. What is different? I use a set of calipers here to measure everything I can. Compare the reloaded rounds to data in your reloading manual. My Lyman manual has drawings and specifications for every cartridge in the book.
Now, what was your problem?? (I assume you found it).
Cort
thanks for the good tips, i ran a bunch of brass thour the rifle after decapping and resizing and of the 25 or so i tried i did find 1 that would not fully chamber, so i dont know if that is it or not. I am running the right bullets thour the rifle as i shoot about 25 rounds or the same data the same day i ran into this problem. I am using no crimp and am decapping and resizing per the refrence on the intsructions on the hornady dies. I compared some factory rounds i had like you suggested and cant find more than a tiny difrence, all my reloads are below the max case length and above the case trim lenght suggested in the reloading mannual. I got my hands on a diffrent 7mm and out of the 12 rounds that would not chamber in my 7mm, half of them did chamber in my buddy's. I for the life of me cant figure out the problem execpt for mybee the not trimming of the cases. One round will not chamber then i pick up his twin form the same batch, same C.O.L and same case length and it chambers fine!!!
Sizer dies, by design, can not "reach" all the way to the bottom/belt.
IOW, some of your "won't fit" brass may have been fired in a larger chamber than your rifle has, and it's that last few thousanths ahead of the belt (where the die won't reach) that's hanging you up.
Your not being negative. I hadn't seen where the brass had all come from your rifle, is all. [B)]
If you take a case fired in your rifle, but unsized, will it rechamber 4 times, rotated 90^ between attempts? I ask because I was recently exposed to a rifle that produced cases that were .002 out of round and the fired cases would only go back in one way.
From here on out, it's a process of elimination, until we find the one step where problems start to occure
Now, size (only) one or 2 of your "problem childrec" without the decapping stem/expander in place, and see how they do.
Now re-install the decapper/expander and try them again.
Next back off your seating die 1/2 turn (to insure the crimping edge isn't catching the case mouth) and try seating bullets in those cases (you will have to lower your seating stem to get the correct OAL) and try again.
Finaly lower the seating die back down to where you had it, and raise the seating stem so it can't contact the bullet, than run them through one last time.