Originally Posted by
CFJunkie
There is a difference between a 'tight chamber' and a 'short chamber' in my vernacular.
A 'tight chamber', to me, means the chamber, especially the neck transition to the rifling is narrower than spec so it increases pressure on the round as it fires. That causes higher pressure on ignition and that shows up in flattened primers and tight bolts on extraction.
A 'short chamber', to me, means that the length from the bolt face to the rifling is shorter than the 'cartridge base to ogive' as loaded. It could be because the bullet was loaded out too far in the brass or that the distance from the bolt face to the rifling is shorter than SAMMI recommended length. I had one rifle that was short by about 0.010 and it would not load factory ammo that was 0.005 short of SAMMI recommended O.A.L length.
Since you can load and shoot factory ammo, you don't have chamber that is shorter than standard. And you don't have a tight chamber because you didn't say that you had any pressure signs with factory ammo, tight bolt movement or flattened primers. Since factory ammo is loaded for velocity and is generally near enough to Pmax, it would cause issues if the chamber was bored too tight. I had those issues with a chamber on a new rifle that was probably bored with a reamer than was at the end of its useful life. Boring the chamber out a few thousandths reduced the pressure and solved the problem completely.
Therefore, I sounds like your brass is not sized for your chamber. I am assuming from your description that you didn't load your bullets too long for your rifle's chamber and the bullet ogive wasn't touching the rifling.
It may be that your die is not seated down far enough for the brass to get all the way into the die to be resized. Or you need to try another die.
Even a standard full resizing die should get the entire brass body within the specs that match factory ammo.
Do you know anyone who resizes .223 brass that you might try one of their resized brass to see if it would fit your chamber.
That might answer all your questions in one step.