Got a 25-06AI barrel used here on the forum a while back. Got everything assembled but then ran out of time to start load dev until just this week.

Barrel came with 50 pieces of fire formed brass. I noticed that the shoulder didn't look fully formed on most of them, specifically the neck to shoulder junction. Decided to set them aside and focus on getting brass that I had been collecting prepped up.

Did some test fire form loads this past weekend to see how much Unique I would need to fully form the shoulders. Worked up to 8.5 grains topped off with Cream of Wheat. Still not quite enough to fully form the shoulder it appears, but also appears that I might have a bigger/different issue on my hand.

All my brass cases show the same neck to shoulder junction issue as on the nickel brass.

From what it looks like, I am thinking that the chamber may not have been fully reamed out to full AI? It kind of looks like it goes neck -> 17deg -> 40 deg. This is my first AI chamber though, so not exactly sure what other potential causes may be out there.

I am not sure who was the original owner (I bought it 2nd hand here, and original owner info was/is not available) is so I can't fully ascertain what was done and who did it. It's a 112J barrel. Cro-Mo. Blued with some sort of gray coating over the top. Varmint contour. If you happen to know some of it's lineage and can help fill in some blanks, that would be great.

If this is something that I can fix myself or pay a smith a reasonable amount to fix I will have the barrel worked on. I don't know how the barrel shoots so that makes me ambivalent about spending more than say $100, which is what I believe Jim @ Apache charges to rechamber.

Nickel - brass - brass



3 Nickel cases