LARRY338

Duck, after re reading your posts, it sounds like you might have a crooked chamber. I mean the bolt face might not be square to the axis of the chamber and bore. I have a 243 thats like that and it shoots good enough, but if you take a fired case and put it on the runout guage backwards so that the rim is under the dial and the case body is on the rollers, its crooked as hell. Mine will also leave that little bulge at the head section right where the chamber ends. Its actually bending the case when its fired. Still just guessing..... Ive never bothered to fix my 243 because I dont shoot it very much, and in spite of the boltface being out of square, it will average about 3/4" groups with 35 gr of 4064 and 70 gr sierra' s. Ive sent many a corn field marauding crow to the happy hunting grounds with that rifle. Good luck with your puzzle.

Judson

You said that with out the expander you could get the case further into the die? Could it be possiable that the expander is bottoming out in the case? All you need is to have it adjusted down far enough to knock out the primers.
On thing that does bother me is that over .002 is considered excessive head expansion. The rifles I build we keep chamber dementions at minimum and even with max. loads we never find more expansion then .0005 . The brass could be undersized you could check case dementions from a print and compare then. Clymer Manufacturing could probably give you this measurement if you can not find it some place else.

Your Friend
Jud

thndrchiken

The thing that gets me concerned is that you can' t rechamber a case that was just shot in the gun. That tells me that it is a problem with the gun. Do you know anyone that has another 270WSM, that you might be able to get a couple cases from to run through your sizing die and try them in your chamber and then in their chamber. That would be a quick indication of die or rifle.

duckbill

Hi fellows,
Sorry I didn' t get back to ya right away. I' ve been busy.
Here' s the latest: I took a small machinist scribe and began scraping around the chamber. Apparently there was a layer of " something" caked up around the mouth. My best guess is that this was not allowing the case to fully seat in the chamber. Whatever this stuff was, survived several heavy cleaning(break-in)sessions.
This had to be the problem because the spent cases will chamber right back in now. The measurements of the spent cases show apprx. .003 expansion, but it is a gradual expansion. Before, it was leaving a sharp ridge.
I hope this makes sense. This is the first NEW rifle I' ve owned in a long time. Most of my guns are old and well broken in by the time I get them.
Thanks for all of your help and any follow up comments are welcome.