So I'm pretty perplexed with this one… I have a 243 Win that I built out of spare savage parts. I had four boxes of different factory loads (Winchester, Hornady, and Herters) that I shot out of it. All of them grouped very well, and all of them fit nicely into chamber without any resistance on closing the bolt (remember this part for later. So, I took some of the Winchester once fired cases, prepped and seated some 87gr VLD Hunting pills I had laying around.
Now these cases were FL resized, trimmed to spec according to Hornady's manual, and measured with calipers and an LE Wilson case gauge. I used a Hornady OAL gauge, and seated the bullets .020" off based off of the ogive.
The new rounds chamber, but there is a slight resistance when closing the bolt. It still closes, but certainly takes a bit more force than the factory loads.
I have since measured the seating depth vs the factory ammo, and the VLD's are seated just a little deeper vs the factory ammo.
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I also measured the once fired cases vs a prepped and primed case, and the prepped cases are just shy of the fired ones.
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I'm just curious what I did wrong. Am I ok to shoot these with the semi tight bolt?
