Savage 12 F/TR light primer strike

I'm having an issue with my sons 12 F/TR. He gets around 1 out 25 miss fires, using CCI 200 primers. When those rounds are tried in my Savage 10BA, they go bang 1st time. When I look at the primer dent between the two, the BA clearly hits the primer harder, deeper or both. Kind of subjective, but it even sounds louder when you dry fire it.

I wonder if they used a different spring in the BA vs. F/TR? I would like to resolve this because it's a PITA during a match when he has a good shot, target comes up and he gets a click, then has to wait to clear it. I may contact Savage and see what they say.

Anyone else see this before?

Update on this:

To clarify, this is actually a 12 Model Benchrest. I got to checking head space w/ the tape trick on the case head. (I know not the most accurate). I checked w/ a fired round of box ammo and with a previously fired hand load and last a re-sized handload case. Wanted to make sure it was not a re-sizing problem with the shoulder.

What I found was, it took anywhere from .009" - .014" on the case head to keep the bolt from closing. The fire formed box ammo (not re-sized) was the least at .009". The re-sized handload was .011.

So I'm guessing I have to have the headspace adjusted before we shoot this again?

You have to remember the case spings back when being sized or fired. What you really need is a headspace gage period.Then while sizing you should have the hornady tool to measure how much you are setting the shoulder back during resizing.If the sizer is screwed down till it touches the shell holder you dont really know what you have until you measure it first to see how much you are bumping it back. What I do is back off the full length die one turn and size one,measure with the hornady tool,screw in a 16th of a turn till you get .002 thou set back and stop. Try a dummy case in the chamber and close the bolt.If it closes easy you are there.You probably have a headspace problem.The gages are about 30.00,and it is absolute insurance to get it right.Remember to remove the extractor before checking the headspce or grind a relief to clear the extractor.

The only time I had problems with my 12 F/TRs not lighting off rounds were ones that I hadn't seated the primers fully. Between the tight pockets of Lapua .308 brass and a hand priming tool... I thought they were seated enough, but they weren't. Switching to a different tool for a time and making sure the primers were bottomed out in the pocket (without crushing them) fixed the problem. FWIW, I took the rounds that didn't go off home and on a lark, tried firing them again. Bang bang bang. Apparently the first whack with the firing pin seated the primer just fine... not that I'd recommend that, certainly not in a match!

Otherwise... I agree with Jon - you probably want to check headspace of fired rounds with a proper comparator tool (Hornady, Sinclair Int'l, Forster, etc.). Its entirely possible you're over-sizing the cases and the firing pin strike is shoving them forward in the chamber if they are way undersized. The 10BA might have just enough more firing pin protrusion that enables it to set those rounds off when the 12 BR is not. If you are getting 9-14 thou difference between fired and the bolt not closing at all... either something is off, or you are pushing on the bolt handle too much. On a couple chamberings that I don't have headspace gages for, I usually set the barrel headspace so *one* thickness of tape (masking tape being 3-4 thou in thickness on average) is all the difference there is between the bolt handle closing normally, and starting to feel resistance. I can muscle thru more than that... but thats not the point of the exercise here.

Measure the fire pin (un-cocked), both bolts and compare the difference. You will have to un-cock both bolts, after removing from the action.

This should solve or answer most questions. If they are the same distance, start looking for other problems.

I already checked and it has .058" firing pin protrusion.

Have you tore the bolt down to see if it's full of crud or really thick lube?

I shot a match two months ago in the very cold with a 15-20 MPH cross wind that was blowing snow and sand around pretty good. My bolt ended up getting very nasty inside as well as the rest of the rifle. This led to a misfire just like the one you described.

broncbob,

Thats a very good point. A while back at a team practice one of our better shooters was having a heck of a time getting rounds to go off. Turned out he doesn't shoot that gun (BAT action) much if ever in the cold, and had a lot of lube/grease inside the firing pin. Took it off the line, took apart the bolt and hosed it off with brake cleaner and off it went, bang bang bang.

I generally keep mine more on the dry side, or use very thin/light oil because of the dust issues around my locale, just as you described.

Monte