brass resizing issues, part 2

I had a post describing an issue I was having getting my resized brass to fit the chamber of my new 260 Rem in the Savage Centerfire forum, but thought the discussion might be more appropriate here. The problem was that even after resizing the brass and pushing the shoulder back by .002, the cases were still a very tight, sticky fit in the chamber. When I resized enough to get an easy fit, the shoulder was pushed back by up to .008.

Following some good advice received here, I used a marker to draw four lines the length of a case that I had resized enough to push the shoulder back by .002". I then chambered the case and forced the bolt closed and open about five or six times. turns out the neck and shoulder showed no friction at all, and the lines were worn off about 1/2" above the head of the case, just above the webbing. Obviously the problem is that the chamber is so tight that the sides of the cases are not resized enough until the shoulder gets pushed way too far back.

The question is, what to do to solve this? Custom dies? Have the chamber honed slightly wider? I also see the Redding offers "small base" body dies in 260 Rem. Is that the ticket? And mostly out of interest (but also because I think I'm having the same problem with a 22-250) what is the best thing to do if a small base die is not available in a given caliber?

Easiest route is the Redding small base die, that will solve the problem. Your brass life will suffer some constantly squeezing down the base. Other option is running a finish reamer into your chamber to eliminate the tight area, a job best left to a gunsmith unless your set up for this type of work.

Try annealing your brass, not the whole case just shoulder & neck, that will soften up a bit so you don't over work it and give you a little more case life.
There is a very good post and article on the forum about it but you may need to spend the $12 to access it, or maybe someone knows how to post the link to it, I would but to be honest I'm not sure how to do it.

The Redding body die will fix the problem but I have to wonder what the cause is. If you are firing the reloads in the same rifle they were originally fired in they should go back in the same chamber with very little trouble, at least for the first couple of firings. ???

Bob

Just curious, what brand is the brass?

Having read your earlier post I see the answer to my question is Winchester brass. That was my guess by the way. Have had similar problems with case swelling at the base with both 22-250 and 25-06 and also with WSM brass. It's all in the recylce bin now and have had none of these problems with federal and remington brass with virtually the same loads.

I had a similar problem with my 308 Winchester. I loaded up 20 rounds and when I tried to put them into the chamber, the bold would not close. In looking at the brass, I noticed what appeared to be a swelling right at the shoulder. After thinking about everything from a bad chamber to a bad die, I decided it must be something out of whack with these dies. I have recently changed from an old RCBS Jr. press to a Rock Chucker and have been loading .223 and .280 Remington with no problems and it dawned on me the ram on the Rock Chucker goes up more than the Jr. press. My old .308 dies were set of the Jr. This presents no problems when sizing as you can only FL size until the shell holder meets the die. However, the problem was the seating die. It seems what was a perfect setup for the Jr. press was not for the RC. The case actually went past the crimp and the die pushed the neck and shoulder back and bulged the case at the shoulder. With the leverage on the RC, I never noticed it. Well, I found some more fired rounds and sized and loaded them and reset my seater die correctly and the cases chamber like the are supposed to.

You might have done what I did and are looking at all kinds of reasons it has happened. I googled the problem and no where did I find anything about an out of adjustment seating die, but that is what I had. All I can say is DUH!

I am going to pull the bullets and salvage the powder but I have no clue if I can salvage to brass. At least it is only 20 rounds.

"IF" I'm following this correctly, you ARE able to size the brass enough to fit the chamber BUT only if you push the shoulder back farther than is optimal for your chamber..

In that case, I would not waste the $$ on a special small base die. What I would personally do is buy another FULL LENGTH Lee sizing die, and then cut the top off the die. Obviously you will want to remove from the die the section that presses on the shoulder of the case. Once you have cut the die, you can then size all the way down to the case head if you so desire without affecting the case head to shoulder length, and you have avoided the cost of an expensive body die, or small base die. I have several Lee dies that I have modified by opening up the neck sizing section and now use them for body sizing, and shoulder bumping only. You can probably find a used Lee die set on E-bay just for this purpose. Good luck!

Wow, some great info here.

It sounds like I might want to try different brass. Yes, it is Winchester brass, and I have to say that every time I have had this problem (as mentioned I have the same problem with a 22-250) it was with Winchester brass. Another interesting option is to cut the shoulder portion off of a regular FL die, although it seems like unless one is set up with the right cutting tools (how DOES one do this, anyway?? A hacksaw seems a bit crude...) then it might be easier to just pay $32 for a small base resizing die instead of paying $25 for a regular die and then still having to hassle with cutting it down.

Maybe switching brass is the easiest option. I was thinking of picking up some Lapua .308 brass and necking it down anyway (I know I could also neck up Lapua .243 brass, but I plan to turn the necks a bit and want to have enough thickness to do that), so maybe it's just time to make the purchase. I was holding out until they come out with the new Palma brass, since I wanted to test it out in a .260 Rem, but they keep pushing back the availability date on that.

I have a few pieces of Rem brass sitting around, and I can maybe test a few firings with those too.

Taking the rifle back to the gunsmith is a last option, especially since I had it chambered originally with a custom PT&G reamer. I still have that reamer, but running it in again would probably make little to no difference anyway.

Bob T, yes I am firing the cases in the same chamber. I'm guessing that one of two things is happening: either the case walls right above the web are expanding on firing and not springing back enough, or when resizing a little extra brass gets pushed down into this area that's not fully in contact with the sides of the die yet. Of course once the case gets jammed all the way into the die this gets squeeze back to size in this area, but then the shoulder also gets pushed back too far. That's why cutting the top off of a standard die would work!

Crap-can the brass and try some different brass. I have gone through a lot of similar problems with winchester brass where it would not chamber in the rifle it was shot out of. Problem solved as mentioned by using remington and federal cases.

AK,
One of the biggest problems with the 260 is getting decent brass. You can neck down 308 Lapua brass, but you're going to have really short necks. My last batch of Lapua 308 brass I tried this with was 2.012" long before sizing and 2.017" after necking down and fireforming/trimming. And necking down that much - it won't stay concentric - you'll have to shoot it at least once to get it into decent shape. The brass in the neck will be quite thick also. I had to shoot it to get it concentric, before I could turn it to true it up. And it was still short.....

I've struggled with this for awhile. I've had some decent luck with Nosler brass. Decent but pricey. I just bought some 7mm-08 Norma brass and it looks really nice. It is expensive, but probably has the least variation in neck wall thickness of any brass I've tried. Am thinking about sacrificing 10 pieces or so for a neck-down-to-260 test. From what I can measure, it's as good or better than Lapua.... Just some thoughts from someone who's been down that road.

If I was going to buy new brass, it would be Norma 7mm-08, not Lapua 308..... My Norma brass averaged 2.027" before trimming - gives you more length to work with....

Some of my best groups to date with the 260 have been with Nosler brass, lightly turned (just minimal cleanup) and 123 gr Scenar's over 46.5 gr H4831sc with Fed 210m primers.....Mine is a 28" LW barrel and when the stars align I can get groups in the low 2's..
Elkbane

I just necked up some old win brass 243 to 260 and I also loaded some new win. brass and the difference in the quality of the old stuff,probably 20 years old and the new stuff is like night & day.
Try necking up 243 if you have some.

RT,
Necking up good quality 243 brass will work, but monitor your groups for vertical after a few firings. I did it with new Lapua 243 brass. I got great groups out of the brass for the first two firings, then the donuts showed up and I started getting vertical dispersion in my groups. And donuts are almost impossible to totally remove; at least the are for me.

AK, I tried necking down 5 pieces of once-fired Norma 7mm-08 brass last night. It worked extremely well. I ended up with brass 2.029" long, with very concentric necks. I used a Forster FL die with expander ball removed to neck down, then ran them over a 6.5mm mandrel for final inside neck sizing. I measured neck wall thickness between 14.25 and 14.5 thou. One case had a high spot at 15 thou. I turned them all to 14 thou even. For comparison, my current lot of Nosler 260 brass had necks from 12 to 13 thou, so I had to turn them all to 12 thou. The additional thickness helps you not have to "work" the brass as much while sizing....

Hope this helps. I can't shoot the new brass for awhile as I have the 260 barrel off the action waiting for a SSS stock to come in.
Elkbane