Failure To Extract and Primary Extraction

This topic comes up fairly often. Differences in opinions have hijacked several threads. This is not an effort to prove one right or wrong but an opportunity to discuss the issue and to learn for all interested parties. I believe that most people have the desire to help out. Everyday I read something that reminds me of things I forgotten or was not thinking of.

Failure To Extract or FTE

I check every dimension and generally know what to expect when I am reloading. I can't remember ever having a FTE that I did not know what it cause was right away. All modern bolt action rifles have a mechanism, normally a ramp of some design that assists in the rearward movement of the bolt assisting in the extraction of a fired case. This is Primary Extraction or P.E..

I once had a guy show me how his Rem 700 bolt moved rearward on open, and there was clearly no contact at the ramp. What he saw was the firing pin spring pulling the bolt rearward on open. He swore that was primary extraction. I marked the ramps with a magic marker, pointed to the ramp and he still felt like P.E. was happening even though there was no rub.


Why is this mechanism needed? For various reasons especially on cases with a slow taper there is a tendency for a case to hang in the chamber. Imperfections, dirt and grime, carbon over pressure, over expanded cases on some WSM's and other magnums. Maybe even poor sizing techniques or tools. Possibly a projectile jamming the lands. Case OAL can can cause this and is very dangerous, always check that Surplus stuff. At one point and time the primary extraction is going to be needed. Therefore it is important that your rifle have a properly functioning Primary extraction.

Primary Extraction Is easy to check. Easy to check for not enough and obvious if there is too much. Once you are certain that you have P.E., from that point forward your troubleshooting skills move away from P.E. and onto the chamber or the cartridge/case.

A seasoned shooter looks at his brass. He will notice scratches carbon or any imperfections in fired cases. he will look at the primers and face. If you do not do that, you should start. Dirt in the chamber. One windy spring Sunday morning we were 20 wide at the line in F/tr. There was no wind when we started, but the second leg the wind was gusting 15 to 20 mph. After the first shot for record, I opened the chamber and dropped in round 2. The wind swirled around the berm an lifted a bunch of dirt into the air, when the wind dropped i pushed the bolt forward with a little resistance and fired. A little effort to open and get the case out this time. I looked at the neck and saw it had sealed. I looked at the shoulder and there were scratches all around. Next round same thing. Every time the wind would pick up I noticed all of the seasoned shooters throwing a towel over the actions and closing the bolt It took a 410 mop with some bore paste on the end of a cordless drill to make salvage that chamber without a setback.


One day I while doing load work up a NASA engineer(yes a real Rocket Scientist) came over and struck up a conversation. Ultimately he had noticed I was another hand loader like himself and he was trying to figure out why he had to hammer on his bolt knob to get it to open and pull rearward. I looked at his 700 and noticed it opened and closed correctly unloaded. I asked for a loaded round and inserted it. It took force to close it so I extracted the round. There was carbon muck all over the case. I looked at his fired cases and they all looked the same, covered in that stuff. Some things I found out about his process. He had never read the front of a reloading manual. He had problems with extraction and he had sprayed a lubricant in the chamber to help out. His cases had somewhere between 15 and 20 firings. He had noticed that seating the bullet had become very difficult. His whole problem was hard necks on his brass. He was given the advice to clean the barrel and chamber till it was shiny, buy new ammo or brass and see me next weekend when the range opened. He was there and problem solved. To this day I am still dumbfounded at his paradigm. This is an example of annealed brass vs hardened brass that does not seal.

http://matthewcanning.net/wp-content...ua-Cases-3.jpg



I have never experienced this with a WSM but a poster on this forum was asking about P.E. on his WSM. The poster had checked the P.E. and it was good. However he was have a hard time on extraction. Fred Moreo pointed out that the WSM case gets swollen just above the head. It was measured and found to be larger than the chamber. The guy bought new brass and the problem went away. My point is there are multiple reasons for extraction issues. One should clean their rifle and chamber after every session. If you rifle is functioning properly and you are weak on proper cleaning and reloading techniques you are going to get an education on what things to look for and how to fix it. Either you will use your own skills or you will utilize the experience of others. The later is what forums are all about. Not a pissing contest.