TexasShooter59
Member
Recently, I was in a rifle match with 3 jams. The offending cartridges are in the attached photos. What happened in each case was that the cartridge would not chamber fully and had to be ejected. And, it took a lot of force pulling the charging handle to get the cartridge out!
I've only seen this "belling" happen to a case less than a handful of times over the span of more than a couple thousand rounds reloaded. I have always caught them with visual inspection before. If they weren't too bad, I would shoot them as foulers.
As part of my reloading process, I full length resize using a lube on the outside of the case and Imperial Dry Neck Lube by dipping the neck in it. After cleanup, I run each case through the Wilson case gage, followed by trimming if necessary. I inside chamfer every case and outside chamfer the trimmed cases. I also crimp at bullet seating. I do not run the completed cases through the Wilson gage after seating.
The cases are all range pickups or my own. The current bullets are the Hornady 55 gr. Z-MAX with cannelures. 5.56 chamber.
I measured the OAL of each of these three at about 2.230" when I was going for 2.225". I'm sure I wrote them off as being okay due to the bullets being a little long. Putting the completed rounds in the Wilson case gage now shows them to protrude at the base just a very small amount.
Any thoughts on what might be causing this? Thanks!
I've only seen this "belling" happen to a case less than a handful of times over the span of more than a couple thousand rounds reloaded. I have always caught them with visual inspection before. If they weren't too bad, I would shoot them as foulers.
As part of my reloading process, I full length resize using a lube on the outside of the case and Imperial Dry Neck Lube by dipping the neck in it. After cleanup, I run each case through the Wilson case gage, followed by trimming if necessary. I inside chamfer every case and outside chamfer the trimmed cases. I also crimp at bullet seating. I do not run the completed cases through the Wilson gage after seating.
The cases are all range pickups or my own. The current bullets are the Hornady 55 gr. Z-MAX with cannelures. 5.56 chamber.
I measured the OAL of each of these three at about 2.230" when I was going for 2.225". I'm sure I wrote them off as being okay due to the bullets being a little long. Putting the completed rounds in the Wilson case gage now shows them to protrude at the base just a very small amount.
Any thoughts on what might be causing this? Thanks!