Failure to feed

W

wahoowah

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I have a Remington 700 SA that I had rebarrelled to .22 BR for crow hunting so the Chamber neck ID is on the loose side rather than a tighter benchrest neck. I made up 35 loads using 6 MM Norma brass turned and shortened to what I wanted, all uniform. When I went to the range I fired seven rounds and then one round would not chamber at all, the bolt handle would not even start to turn down. The next three rounds chambered and fired easily then two in a row would not chamber. At that point I knew I had a problem so I stopped shooting those that would chamber but then ran the rest of the 35 cartridges to see if they would chamber. After trying all of the rest of them, 6would not chamber plus the original 3 which would chamber, for a total of nine. I tried chambering the three original ones and found that two of them would chamber but only after I bumped the handle with the heel of my hand. The two extracted with no problem. Originally I just laid the cartidge on top of the follower, but when I re-ran them, I pushed them down into the magazine so the bolt would have to pick them up normally,

When I got home I got my mikes and dial caliper and measured all of the unfired cartridges for neck OD, OAL cartridge length and case length. All numbers were uniform and within my target specs, some of the neck ODs were even .001 under the others. This 700 had originally been a .308 Winchester and I never had any feeding problems with it.

The only thing thing I can think of at this point is that something is wrong with the bolt face, such as extractor will not snap over the shell's rim or a similar problem.

If anyone has had this problem in the past, I'd appreciate your letting me know how to resolve it. I've been reloading since 1965 and have never run into this before which goes to show us that there is always one more thing to learn.

Thanks.
 
I have had (still do) this problem with a Rem S/A in the .204.
I replaced the extractor and worked fine for about 150 rounds and now I am back to the original problem.
I am think I am going to have a Sako extractor installed on mine and be done with it.

Tim
 
I lean toward agreeing with Steve. At least it's one of the things I'd eliminate as a possibility before tearing things apart.
 
The only things I can think that would cause the problem you're experiencing are headspace, the cases that won't chamber are too long from their heads to datum line on the shoulder, or the rims are too thick.

I've never had a problem with too thick rims in any centerfire rifle I've used or loaded for. Mauser type, Remington , Sako, or Savage they're all caught and extracted any case they've been fed. These should be fairly easy to check with a dial caliper plus or minus a little which shouldn't matter.

Case headspace can be checked easily with a Stoney Point (Hornady) headspace or Sinclair bump gauge. If you have a minimum headspace chamber some of the cases may be a tad longer. If the nine cases that won't chamber are a bit longer than the others you'll need to pull the bullets on those and run them into an FL or shoulder bump die to shove the shoulders back to where they are on the other cases.

One other thing just occurred to me. Did you turn the necks onto the shoulder slightly? If you didn't there could be a small bump at the shoulder/neck junction that could hang things up.
 
Check the primer depth. I've got in a hurry priming and left a few slightly high and they refused to chamber.
Jerry
 
Thanks to all who took the time to post a reply. I will try your suggestions. I will put off getting a Sako extractor until last even though I had originally thought about it doing that when I was putting the rifle together. One problem with that is that I don't know of a gunsmith in this area who does this kind of work.
 
The extractor is not going to prevent your rounds from chambering unless the caseheads are swelled. Examine your cases that won't chamber for scratches or shiny spots to see what is causing the interference. If some of the cases were fired in another rifle they may be tight in front of the extractor groove. Jon
 
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