ejpaul1

Alright. I took the wife out shooting today with the ole NEF 243. Well, one of the cases split completly around. After examining the round and the chamber, I found that the chamber is marred. I am sooo tired of fighting with all of the problems from the NEF I decided I aint spendin another dime. So, I went right out and bought one of those stevens 200 in 243. It shure looks great (mechanically) for 316.00 (including tax). Its kinda her rifle, but maybe she'l let me use it! EJ

Pawildman

EJ...tell us more...Were these reloads you were shooting in the NEF? Did you try to clean the chamber after the case separation, and how did that go? I have some suspicions here.....

ejpaul1

Allright, Here are the dirty details. I have been shooting 100 grain hornady BTSP's in front of 40 grains of H-4350 exclusively in this rifle for a long time, 2 years to be exact. At first, everything was fine. I took a 160 Lb doe with it and it performed beautifully. It will nearly put one bullet on top of another. Then it began sticking cases, they wouldnt eject. SO I tried everything under the sun and finally the only thing that would work was when I milled about5 thousandths off the resizing die. So it wasnt quite a small base but close enough. The problems seemed to be gone. I loaded up a hundred or so of these giving them a good inspection and all seemed well until yesterday. The brass was admittedly getting old (about 4 uses) but after this had occurred, I examined the brass and about 30 of them had at least the same marked area from the chamber and tw0 showed cracking along with the completly split one. I aint wasting another dime on this barrel, I am out too much with this thing anyway. I will probably just buy a shotgun barrel for 50 bucks (when I can save it up) to salvage the remainder of this gun. I hear wonderful things about NEF's but I am personally done with it as a rifle I rely on. EJ

Pawildman

I'm wondering if when you milled the die you reset it to just touch the shoulder of a fireformed to your gun casing. If not, I think you may have been setting the shoulder back, thus increasing headspace and promoting case stretch, which will in turn cause the separations you had. The separation problems would cause gas leakage and could have promoted the marring of the chamber. Just a thought..............

Red Lion

You will be much happier with the Stevens.

rem 700

The Stevens 200saren't real 'pretty' but they're very accurate and have an excellent price tag

ejpaul1

I am having a bit of an issue with feeding on this one. Anybody have similar problems like this? It occasionally just pops it out of the gun into the air when trying to feed. EJ

Hard Luck

I don't want to burst your bubble but I bought two of the stevens in .243. Both gave case head seperations. I won't have another ! One I bent around a tree in flustration and the other got traded to an obsecure gun shot 200 miles away. Yes, I sent them to the factory and they were repaired, returned and did the same think. (good service)
As to your handi rifle, I just bought one in 45-70 no problems, the guys on Greybeard say the .243 is the most troublesome of the lot. You don't need small base dies. Try polishing the chamber a little. But talk to the guys on the handi-forum at Greybeard outdoors.

Pawildman

Hard Luck......... I meant to say that on my previous post, but you are absolutely right.... The chambers in some of those guns seem to need a little "slicking up" to stop the sticking problem. Small base dies are a different die for applications such as semis and the odd slightly undersized factory chamber which does not seem to be the norm here. Lots of folks have reported sticking problems with them. A light polishing seems to be a viable answer.