Brass sticking at all powder charges

[xsn10s]

Anytime you have to hammer your rifle to open the bolt, whether it's a custom or production rifle, it's advisable to first call your builder or manufacturer. Pounding is pretty drastic measure.

 

[xsn10s]

I'll say this much. Continued firing with live ammo could void your warranty. You should really call your builder. If it's what I'm thinking it's a easy fix that they can do.

 

[Cuz]

Check your fired brass to see if it's out of round, could be slightly out of round chamber. Have you tried to rechamber a fired round?

 

[Rhovee]

I would check fired brass to virgin brass and see how much neck clearance you have. Upload a picture of the fired brass with scratches.

 

[86alaskan]

Builder has been contacted waiting for reply. It's had about 15rds down the barrel, which is honestly more than I should have, I know. Hopefully it can be easily remedied, it took 8mo to build

 

[86alaskan]

To the above post, I misused "pounding" I should've said firm whack. If I remember correctly from the weekend, once the bolt began its rearward travel, it slid back normally. So I essentially was breaking the brass loose from something in the chamber. I'll measure a couple fresh and fired soon

 

[okie man]

Bend a paper clip into a L and run it up and down your canber and see if you feel anything! If you do it's a rough chamber wall! You shouldn't feel anything

 

[86alaskan]

Upon further testing, a cleaned fired case is sticky going in, then exhibits the same hard lift and bind when I try to extract. Something is definitely up. Case head expansion is .004 over a virgin unfired sized case.

 

[86alaskan]

I'm definitely on board the bad chamber train now. I ran a well lubed fired case through the redding FLS die. The resulting case easily chambered and extracted. What tpiped me 9ff was the shiny r8ngs left after sizing. I suspect a ringed chamber, and when resized, the die only hits the high spots on the case, causing the shiny rings.

 

[xsn10s]

That's not the worst case I've seen. Hard to tell from the pictures but some smith might opt for polishing the chamber. Your builders will know what to do. They earned their reputation. One of the reasons I'm guessing that made it so hard to open is the surface area of the case. It's much bigger case than my 270 win which had dramatically worse chatter. It was more of a deep gouge than "ridges and scratches". In any case just let you builder take care of it. Good luck.

 

[Edd]

I think you have a lousy chamber. You can probably polish it and solve your sticking issue but you will still have a lousy chamber.

 

[86alaskan]

But am I really losing anything from the lousy chamber? Like I mentioned, this sucker is stacking rounds with just break in loads. Figure the body will end up .001 or less larger from a good polish, so it can't end up that much different.

 

[xsn10s]

I don't think it's a lousy chamber if it performs like that. In any case the builder will take care of it. I'm pretty sure of that.

 

[Johnny_V]

Sounds to me like a classic case of a bolt that's out of time. If the bolt doesn't engage the extraction cam at the proper time you'll have this problem. Fired case doesn't look all that bad, I've had much worse and they extracted with ease. You didn't mention what type of action you have. If it's a Remington 700 with the RR prefix on the serial number, then an out of time bolt is most likely your problem.