Bullet seating

I necked sized some once fired Hornday brass for Savage 111 Long Range Hunter 6.5 creedmoor

I took measurements with the Hornady OAL gauge using 129 gr Hornady SST and to the lands measured 3.230. I wanted to begin my testing seated at .030 off the lands so I seated the bullet and using the Hornady OAL gauge I measured 3.200. When I tried to chamber the round the bolt was difficult to close and more difficult to open. I inspected the round and discovered some chafing of the bullet (see pictures). This chafing only appears on one part of the bullet not completely around it. I tried loading a cartridge with no bullet and the bolt closed easily. According to my measurements I should not be jamming the bullet so what could be causing this problem.


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Try another dummy round loaded .030" deeper and see if it chambers easily. Check your feed ramp for burrs, if present, they can be polished away with a kratex polishing tip in a Dremel.

Wow, Nasty scrape ! If the cartridge was fed from the magazine check to see if the mag is properly positioned in the stock and/or action. Also chk the feed lips to see they are releasing the cartridge properly. Check to see if you get the same marking on the bullet when simply dropping the cartridge on the follower then chambering. ................... Take several readings of seating depth to confirm your 3.230" reading. Bullets tend to stick in the lands when removing from chamber using the OAL gauge. Smearing a little case lube around the ogive helps.

Here is how I might approach that problem for what it is worth.

1) Is this a new barrel?...It looks like the scuffs are coming from the leading edge of the freebore...Is it possible that chamber has a burr on that edge causing the scuffs?...a look with a bore scope will show this if it is...

2) The bullets may be "canted" in the cartridge necks or the necks may be grossly off center...A simple check (other than checking runout) would be to mark the case with a permanent marker to establish a "topside of case"...Now, without running the cartridge through the magazine, carefully insert the case close the bolt and pull it out...Color the scratched area with a permanent marker and then re-insert the cartridge with the top mark now "down"....Pull it out and see if the scratched area is re-scratched or is the opposite side now scratched?.....If the same side is scratched then it is the ammo....If the other side is scratched it may be the chamber....

3) As far as the cases being hard to chamber and extract my guess that the once fired, neck sized brass is the culprit....If it came from another rifle then most likely that is the cause...But if it came from this rifle then my guess might be that the chamber is tight enough that the shoulder requires bummping even though it was only fired once....Essentially it might have to be FLR after every shot...

Sometimes these rifles get pretty finicky and I am glad we have forums like these to share our experiences.


Good luck,
Randy

all of what they all said , do it.

My rifle did the exact same thing. The marks would show up in the same spot on the bullet whether you rotated it before re-chambering or not. This was with rcbs neck dies. I found if I set my sizing die to the absolute minimal setting it helped a lot. I set so you barely feel the Rock Chucker cam over on the bottom of the die. Then set the decapping pin so it was just deep enough to release the primer. I still noticed some rounds were tighter than others but amazingly never noticed a difference in accuracy. At 700 yards the gun would shoot .5-.7 moa scuff marks or not. This gun has thousands of rounds through it and this issue never lowered the brass life either. They were also as you described, stiff bolt close and even worse to open. If ejecting an unfired round that was tight it would take a couple smacks with my palm to get the bolt back.

Hope this helps hafejd30

set your fls die to set shoulder back more until bolt closes nicely