A good fellow has the opinion that having the shoulder of his cartridge too far forward has caused excessive pressure. I disagree.

Perhaps someone can enlighten me.

Dang Uncle... being that good fellow I wish we could get together so I could physically show you what's happening with my cases.

Just to let you know a little more about my qualifications... I have none... I didn't start loading until 06...

I look forward to seeing the answers here.

That's a crock. Having the bullet itself too far forward will definately cause a pressure spike, but a shoulder too far forward will only cause stiff bolt closure or impossible bolt closure.

This rifle has a huge free bore, there are no OAL issue's in this exchange between Uncle, and I.

As to the bolt issues your talking about... That was another thing my initial teacher was questioning.

Call it a crock if you want... Your calling me a liar... So I'll ask you... Do you believe that I'm lying? And if you do... Prove me wrong... I at least tried to prove some evidence based on what I actually experienced.. Show me what you've got to prove me wrong before you decide to call me a liar???

Brass being a malable metal will conform to the exact size of the chamber if you can get the bolt closed. The excess pressure can be caused by many things but not the shoulder placement of the brass. Work hardened brass will cause higher pressures in some rifles, anneal a couple and try them.
RR

I would be curious to know what the neck and neck tension are doing as you push the shoulder back in the camber? That is basically what you are doing if you have to push harder on the bolt to get it to close, pushing the shoulder and thus the neck back. What is happening to the tension on the bullet by the neck? How far into the neck is the bullet seated? You increase neck tension you increase case pressure.

Trim length ok? How about neck thickness? These will cause pressure spikes big time .
RR

I do believe that there was a pressure problem of some type, and that the description of the problem is the real issue here.

My opinion is that simply having the shoulder not pushed back (as in full length sizing) could not have been the problem.

The details of our discussion are in another thread about a new guy's loading kit. The basic reported facts are:

LD was first time loader helped by his buddy,
7RUM,
partial sizing caused the problem on once-fired cases,
cases were trimmed to length
pressure spikes due only to shoulder not being set back (per gunsmith)


We were messing up the new loader's thread with this discussion and probably creating some confusion for him.

I'm with big uncle on this. Once the case has been fired nothing more than a neck sizing needs to be done to shoot the reloaded case in the SAME rifle chamber as it was fire formed to fit. Pressure spikes were caused by some thing else.

Al

It depends on the angle of the shoulder of the case. And what happens to the neck, neck tension as the shoulder is pushed back. Could on certain cases pushing the shoulder back in the camber cause the neck to squeeze just a bit tighter on the bullet? I neck size but use a Forster bump die, just to bump the shoulder back a .001-.002. .308 shoulder does not move forward that much, other cartridges do.