neck sticking?

S

shawn

Guest
I have a weatherby mark v in 30-378 wthby mag. hand load with 115 grains hodgdon us869 fed 215m. necks are trimmed and turned but every round fired i have to pry on the bolt to get the round out. the neck comes out tarnished like it was burned. My gunsmith and myself have polished the chamber many times ad it works for a while but then they start sticking again? any ideas?
 
shawn said:
I have a weatherby mark v in 30-378 wthby mag. hand load with 115 grains hodgdon us869 fed 215m. necks are trimmed and turned but every round fired i have to pry on the bolt to get the round out. the neck comes out tarnished like it was burned. My gunsmith and myself have polished the chamber many times ad it works for a while but then they start sticking again? any ideas?
Click to expand...

You didnt say how you are re-sizing the cases.................Don
 
Necks????

Maybe the necks look like that because of the opposite situation. You have exssessive clearance and too much hot gas is passing by the necks, causing the cosmetic occurance you are seeing

Unless the neck portion of the chamber is REALLY rough, it would seem that what you are experiecing would be very rare.......jackie
 
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Poor obturbation would result in gases being pushed back around the neck. These gases will settle into a hard packed layer of fouling that increases with every shot till the neck becomes constricted. Once enough fouling has built up its a matter of the fouling now pushing against the edge of the previous layer and continuing to build even though the neck is now technically sealing, just not sealling by metal to metal contact.

Could be a too stiff case neck. Also could be that the poedr used isn't providing sufficient pressure during the intial phase of burning. Perhaps the powder needs a hotter primer, or some other factor is preventing proper ignition.
 
Old Gunner

Add to that the generous free bore that Factory Weatherby Rifles have, combined with ultra slow powders to achieve the performance that they tout.........jackie
 
Could it be that the cases are sticking elsewhere and the color of the
necks are only causeing you to believe thats the problem area
 
jackie schmidt said:
Add to that the generous free bore that Factory Weatherby Rifles have, combined with ultra slow powders to achieve the performance that they tout.........jackie
Click to expand...

I'm not that familar with the Weatherbys but if these have an extra high capacity and a sharply angled shoulder that would contribute to difficulty in assuring rapid and complete ignition.
 
i am full length and neck sizing. doesn't matter does it both waysnot as bad full lengthed. It is more irritating than anything else. generally only need one shot.
 
All I can figure is to back off the load a grain at a time till it quits sticking.
Could be the powder has degraded for some reason, or the cases used have a lower capacity than those the load was worked up with.
 
I have had the same problem with my 30-378.The only thing that I have been able to figure out is that the brass must be about junk or must be annealed should do this after every firing,an after the third reloading throw your brass away.Have seen on all my brass that they start to realy grow at the belt after that so I would not trust them after that.I never had a problem with new brass or factory stuff doing this.The 869 is kind of slow from my test an I have a 30" barrel,but I was using cci primers an had to switch to federal 215m's to gett a little quicker start.So i guees that I would try some new brass.If you need a few new brass to try let me know I have about 120 or so new ones.
 
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An one other thing to do is clean the neck up with steel wool just enuff to clean the smuge up.After you do this clean the chamber,an take a black marker an color the case from the head to the end of the neck then chamber the round an look for any scrape marks on the case.Do this with a fired case an not a resized case.
 
thanks for the input tate. thebrass has been fired many times. definitely more than 3
 
Shawn .......

First, prove to yourself that the neck isn't too tight for your chamber. This just takes a few seconds. Take a fired case and see if a bullet will drop right down inside the case. If it does (and I bet it will), then your case neck is far smaller then your chamber neck when it's holding a bullet. As a few have already mentioned, your load may be too mild or the powder is being ignited too slowly.

I also recommend measuring your headspace, because if you have too much chamber clearance (at the shoulder) your cases will stretch at every firing. This is common - especially with belted magnum calibers. The cases get thin above the web. Then they weaken and bulge during the reloading process.

How do your cases chamber? Also, are you cleaning ALL of the sizing lube from your handloads? How do your primers look?

- Innovative
 
Has ANYbody else who shoots a lot EVER heard of a neck sticking?

I can't conceive of it and I've stuck me some cases...... for many reasons..... but never had a neck so much as try to stick. Even necks fired 50times with zero clearance without annealing. Necks fired long enough to crimp the bullet, no sticky, necks completely blackened, no sticky.

in short, I don't believe the "necks sticking" is the problem.

Pictures????

al
 
Not too long back, I set my die wrong & bumped some shoulders way further back than I planned to. Those cases rivited back on the bolt face, flattened the primer like I was overpressure to buggery and gave me the stickiest bolt lift I've ever experienced.

The other part of the story is that even though I sized them right the next time, they still gave a sticky bolt lift.

John
 
I looked up the load the thread starter mentioned. Looks like a 115 grain charge is a starter level, if the powder is as slow as it appears to be it might be dangerous to back off the charge weight, it could cause the mysterious secondary detonation we've all heard of, and it could be doing something of the kind even at this weight causing a high pressure spike after a low pressure start up.
So scratch my previous suggestion of trying a lower charge of this type of powder.
 
Alwina ........

This situation is obviously NOT a tight neck, and as I mentioned it just takes a few seconds to prove it. However, there are some calibers that often have case necks that jam. EXAMPLE: The 30-30 and the 458 Win Mag both have very thin brass at the neck, and when using a bit too much roll crimp those necks will buckle. That's obviously not our problem here. I assume he's not trying to roll crimp the case neck, but keep in mind that we're trying to figure what he IS doing wrong. Shawn did mention that his cases were "trimmed and turned". The 378 Wby is the last caliber that I'd want to turn.

shawn ......

It's normal for your fired cases to have slightly smoked case necks. I've seen this needlessly concern some shooters. As Alwina said (it would be good to see pictures). However, case extraction (and especially case chambering) should be easy. Polishing the chamber may actually make your extraction worse, because the body of your case needs to grab the chamber wall. This keeps super high pressure off your bolt face, and it makes extraction easier. Be sure to keep a close look at your primers while solving this problem. What is the neck wall thickness on your cases?

I've seen shooters forget to remove ALL of their sizing lube, and that can also effectively prevent your cases from grabbing the chamber wall.

Old Gunner ......

You made a very good point about minimum loads. The 378 Wby has a whole lot of very slow burning powder. I wouldn't want to go lighter than the recommended minimum load. I've seen case dents from shooters that have tried.

- Innovative
 
Just remembered what my problem was.Must of had a brain cramp the first time I left a post.Measure your belts.Atleast thats what redding reloading told me when they measured up my die,an the old die was just a little to small at the shoulder junction.I dont know what you have for dies but but call the company an talk to one of their techs.I just had to send them some fired brass an some resized.
 
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