Don't you just love it when I bring back an old topic????!!!! Me neither.
Since we last discused the problem, we have cleaned up the chamber so I can seat bullets a little longer. I was origanaly going to shoot an assortment of bullet weights, but have decided to shoot 105+ grain bullets. I can now seat them out there where they don't interfear with powder capasity. Found a load at 32.6 / RL15 @2.44" OAL. We were at 31.3 / 2.37 OAL. All loaded rounds measure .269 at the neck (.2715 chamber) Brass length is all the same 1.54"
I have shot all most 200 rounds of the new load W/O any problems. I was shooting over the chronograph the other night, and grabbed some of the old loads.....third shot.....B A N G. Ok, not really. Nothing felt wrong, but I couldn't see my bullet hole. I just figured I had a double. Tried to open the bolt.....stuck. Pounded it open with a 14" 2x6. Primer blown. Case was almost compleatly seperated at the web, and the brass had flowed into the ejector hole a whole bunch....enough to leave a huge pimple on the brass.
The chrono read a 45 FPS DECREASE , and I went and checked the target and found the bullet hole a foot and a half high and left at 11 o-clock (300 yard target)
Now, I had checked ALL of the loaded rounds before for total weight, OAL, neck clearence......everything. Everything had checked out.
Theory.........secondary explosion. Another shooting buddy of mine(a regular here) brought this up a long time ago. I blew it off because of the age old "reduce 10% to start" pracitce. 10% of 33G (usual max for the dasher/RL15) = 30 G starting point.
We can see no expination for this. I just figured I would shoot off the old loads instead of pulling bullets.....I only had about 30 loaded rounds left. Now I will pull the rest. I shot a couple more into the group after I cleared the gun, but my face was no where near the gun when I pulled the trigger....a practice I think would become detramental to shooting small groups!!
Any more ideas, or am I beating a dead horse.
Thanks....and sorry for bringing up old krap..
TOD