Shooting my first hand loads, bolt is hard to close

jmccracken1214

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Shooting 60gr vmax 223.

All are seated to COL of 2.250 like the hornady book says. Some are 2.248-2.249

It chambers the round fine in my ruger american bolt gun, but pushing the bolt down, its tougher than it should be. Shoots fine and extracts fine, but whats causing the resistance when I try to push the handle down with a round in?
 
Resizing die not putting the shoulder back as far as needed.
That is what I would check.

Thats exactly what it was. Now I have a few questions.

Ive got 100 rounds primed already and not sized correctly, obviously... If I lube them and resize them, whats the best way to get the lube off the cases since they have new primers in them?

2, with the 18 rounds I loaded already shoot fine or do I need to pull the bullets and re do them as well?
 
Wipe the lube off with a towel


Or just forget about the lube and shoot it
I had to turn my die down 1/4 more of a turn and i just deprimed all the live primers/resized 50 cases, tried 1 of every 5 in my rifle, it chambered and extracted perfect! Glad I caught this before I got hundreds of the cases ready to be loaded.
 
Some dies, Hornady, you can pull the decapping pin out and still run the expander ball if you ever mess up and catch it before bullets are seated.
For small batches I always wipe the lube off with a rag.
I don't case gauge rifle rounds, too easy just to adjust the die down incrementally until the bolt closes easily, set the lock ring and go until the barrel gets replaced.
 
Some dies, Hornady, you can pull the decapping pin out and still run the expander ball if you ever mess up and catch it before bullets are seated.
For small batches I always wipe the lube off with a rag.
I don't case gauge rifle rounds, too easy just to adjust the die down incrementally until the bolt closes easily, set the lock ring and go until the barrel gets replaced.

Works great, until you start loading mixed headstamps.
 
Some dies, Hornady, you can pull the decapping pin out and still run the expander ball if you ever mess up and catch it before bullets are seated.
For small batches I always wipe the lube off with a rag.
I don't case gauge rifle rounds, too easy just to adjust the die down incrementally until the bolt closes easily, set the lock ring and go until the barrel gets replaced.

I just did 150 rounds, well, RE DID. so Ill call it a loss on the primers, and just threw all the cases in a container with hot soapy water. Maybe itll get the primer pockets a tad cleaner, ill rinse and bake em in the oven later. Easier than wiping that many down. I checked every 5-10 rounds, after I resized them again, i put the casing in the rifle and it chambered good, i guess once the rcbs die touched my shell holder, I just needed another 1/4 or 1/2 turn to make it right.
 
Works great, until you start loading mixed headstamps.
Seems to work fine then too.

Four brands in .308 a dozen or more in .223/5.56.

I probably set back further than needed in .223 since mixed brass in autoloaders still get 6+ loadings and lose most to split necks or loose pockets, one seperation, less than ten culled for incipent out of over 10k.

.308 lasts until the pockets get loose.

Sent from my SM-G360V using Tapatalk
 
All of mine is once fired, but some is old stuff and some newer. But ive probably got 7-9 different brands of cases in the mix. 1000+ free cases, I didnt complain. Ill get more than my monies worth out of these. Even loading A max bullets instead of cheaper SP's
 
It's not necessary, but it usually works out better to keep batches of brass together. IE, if you have 50 once fired Federal Cases, keep them in the same ammo case and label them as you go. The labels can be notes of such... 2x fired, full sized on such date and so on. Like said above, semi auto's are harder on brass, I usually keep the semi auto brass together and after the 5th use I will fully resize the brass for bolt gun use which should get many more firings.

Just so you don't drown the brass in case lube, it shouldn't hurt the powder. I've loaded rounds without cleaning off the lube and I don't recall any misfires or squibs from it. This includes both wax type lubes and sprays.
 
When you fire a round without cleaning the lube you dramatically increase the amount of force on the bolt face and lengthen the headspace at the same time. Dangerous practice.
The fired brass needs to grip the chamber walls, not bounce off the face of the bolt.....
 
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