Krieger barrel put in AR yesterday. Sticky situation. Advice? Pic attached
- Thread starter Danattherock
- Start date
Looking forward to getting the Hornady headspace gauge in tomm. Curious to see what the instructions say. Seems folks are using different methods when establishing proper head space.
Dan
Dan
Ran into same problem a few years back and followed a previous thread with same info. I found a big diff in a match chamber and a Wylde when sizing. Be sure to keep a good log for reference if using several AR rifles. I found in my AR rifles the Wylde was better suited for my needs and a bit more simple.
When you get the headspace tool. Measure several resized cases, to get an accurate average, and then measure them again after firing. The difference will tell you if you are moving the shoulder back too far. In a bolt gun you are looking for .001 headspace, don't know about a AR platform. If you have been working the cases, it may be time to anneal. Seems to me as if the AR platform will require bumping the shoulder every time so annealing will be necessary.
I would still take a long look at the web measurement between sticky and not sticky cases. It has been my experience that most FL dies don't do much to the web area, you need a "small base" die to do that.
Bill
I would still take a long look at the web measurement between sticky and not sticky cases. It has been my experience that most FL dies don't do much to the web area, you need a "small base" die to do that.
Bill
So once you have determined what fits into your chamber How do you know how far to go after that
Turn the die 1/8 of a turn and cross you fingers hope you don't get a bunch of head separations on 2 fired lapua brass. Maybe in a bolt gun but in a autoloader. "Really" I would rather know than be lucky
Turn the die 1/8 of a turn and cross you fingers hope you don't get a bunch of head separations on 2 fired lapua brass. Maybe in a bolt gun but in a autoloader. "Really" I would rather know than be lucky
tommeboy said:
A scenario for you to ponder regarding "junk" as you call it lol...
You chamber a piece of fired brass and it obviously needs sizing as it is showing some resistance when trying to rechamber it after firing (as it should to a degree) , so you take your fired brass to the trusty press with your sizing die in hand.. You screw the die in so it is at a point which you are comfortable starting with , you size the brass and try it in the rifle.. It still does not chamber well , so you screw the die further down and size again.
Try chambering and still no go but it is getting better , so you then screw the die down further and size the brass , this time it fits perfect and now in your glory you claim you have found your die setting for that particular brass , load , and rifle..
What you don't know without properly measuring is what and where you sized the brass to get to where you are.. What if you inadvertently bumped the shoulder back .011" in order to get to that point... Do you simply claim that's all you can do?? You can try shenanigans like that once or twice but try that on a regular basis with the same brass and you'll have issues.. Some of those issues can be bad for your health and well being. (especially since inspecting the inside of your brass for case head separation would be a waste of time wouldn't it lol)
What very well may have happened in the scenario above is that at a certain point during the set up of the die the shoulder was indeed being bumped but that was not what was causing the stiff chambering , what WAS causing the stiff chambering was an area near the base of the brass and it wasn't until the die was screwed down so as to reach that area that it made it possible to get a nice feel for how it chambered.
But I guess you wouldn't know that because you didn't take any measurements of your fired brass and compare those numbers with the sized brass during all those steps that now does chamber well using such things that you call junk or not needed like a pair of calipers and a comparator of sorts lol..
To add to this , using these tools and instruments are a way of knowing whether or not you have a chamber issue or a die issue... If you think all chambers and their respective dies are all the same you are off to a terrible start.
Pre measuring , measuring during the process and finally measuring when you have reached your final goal are going to tell you everything.... Without measuring you know nothing.
Good luck and I mean Good luck lol
Thanks for the continued education 
As above, the slamming of the bolt in the AR is indeed throwing a wrench in to speak. It is a violent slam that jams brass that a bolt would have gave lots of feedback on. I grab the charge handle and hope it ejects. I'm looking at tiny impressions on my primers where the slamming is making firing pin touch primer. I'm using soft Winchester primers based on my internet data mine. Got 27k of them in my dresser drawer, oh well.
I bumped shoulder back with that 1/8 die turn, bottomed out, and brass finally chambers this Krieger barrel. And man, she is one sexy barrel. She provided two sub MOA loads on first four I made. But is it 0.003-0.005" off chamber (correct term?) as some guy on the net said it should be for my platform? Or is it 0.035" back and I'm setting myself up for case head separation, another term I had to google.
Oh wait, I don't know jack about head space so I just bought this head space gauge which most folks say is not truly a hard space gauge. Crap, now Bayou Shooter tells me I'm screwing up my brass by resizing it. But he does open my eyes to the fact that it could be the base of my brass not being sized enough. Patch fills in the blanks and represents this forum well. Thankfully, as I was about to say the heck with it and continue talking to folks that know less than me to restore my confidence. Think pretty chick hanging with fat chicks.
I'm putting together a 500 piece puzzle (slowly and agonizingly) but find out I'm missing 7 pieces near the end. Out of coffee and the puzzle store is closed. Dayum. I mean datum, one of my new words of the week. German Salazar articles keep me up late, as if the 2 month old baby isn't enough. My two year old is tugging at me just as I get to reading good. Youtube heroes and fuddy duds cloud my judgement with contradictory explanations of head space. Can't separate fact from fiction at this point. Reloading sure is fun though. Hah.
Dan
As above, the slamming of the bolt in the AR is indeed throwing a wrench in to speak. It is a violent slam that jams brass that a bolt would have gave lots of feedback on. I grab the charge handle and hope it ejects. I'm looking at tiny impressions on my primers where the slamming is making firing pin touch primer. I'm using soft Winchester primers based on my internet data mine. Got 27k of them in my dresser drawer, oh well.
I bumped shoulder back with that 1/8 die turn, bottomed out, and brass finally chambers this Krieger barrel. And man, she is one sexy barrel. She provided two sub MOA loads on first four I made. But is it 0.003-0.005" off chamber (correct term?) as some guy on the net said it should be for my platform? Or is it 0.035" back and I'm setting myself up for case head separation, another term I had to google.
Oh wait, I don't know jack about head space so I just bought this head space gauge which most folks say is not truly a hard space gauge. Crap, now Bayou Shooter tells me I'm screwing up my brass by resizing it. But he does open my eyes to the fact that it could be the base of my brass not being sized enough. Patch fills in the blanks and represents this forum well. Thankfully, as I was about to say the heck with it and continue talking to folks that know less than me to restore my confidence. Think pretty chick hanging with fat chicks.
I'm putting together a 500 piece puzzle (slowly and agonizingly) but find out I'm missing 7 pieces near the end. Out of coffee and the puzzle store is closed. Dayum. I mean datum, one of my new words of the week. German Salazar articles keep me up late, as if the 2 month old baby isn't enough. My two year old is tugging at me just as I get to reading good. Youtube heroes and fuddy duds cloud my judgement with contradictory explanations of head space. Can't separate fact from fiction at this point. Reloading sure is fun though. Hah.
Dan
Poor Bastard....LMAO. Learning the hard way.
Just a thought here as well and I am sure most folks will agree with this.... After Virgin Brass has been fired in the chamber it does not ALWAYS stretch to the Maximum chamber dimensions. Some times it takes two or 3 times before it gets so big that it cant be chambered if your running a mild load.
I had a huge learning leason some time back now on that point. I took ONCE fired brass and set my die off of that thinking I was setting my shoulder back .003 and found that I was actually setting it back much much farther because the brass had not stretched all the way forward yet. This caused early case head separation on some expensive Lapua brass as I was pushing the shoulder back so far every time I shot it. Oh how I have to learn the hard way....dang.
So keep this in mind.
I like to have a Case gage made with my reamer and the drop off barrel section during initial chambering so that I can use that to make proper FL die settings. This is hard to do on a store purchased rifle however.
Just a thought here as well and I am sure most folks will agree with this.... After Virgin Brass has been fired in the chamber it does not ALWAYS stretch to the Maximum chamber dimensions. Some times it takes two or 3 times before it gets so big that it cant be chambered if your running a mild load.
I had a huge learning leason some time back now on that point. I took ONCE fired brass and set my die off of that thinking I was setting my shoulder back .003 and found that I was actually setting it back much much farther because the brass had not stretched all the way forward yet. This caused early case head separation on some expensive Lapua brass as I was pushing the shoulder back so far every time I shot it. Oh how I have to learn the hard way....dang.
So keep this in mind.
I like to have a Case gage made with my reamer and the drop off barrel section during initial chambering so that I can use that to make proper FL die settings. This is hard to do on a store purchased rifle however.
You need to get your info from one source. With no confusion and no contradiction. Listen to one guy
Patch is a good teacher He knows what he is talking about. That's why I backed off. I sensed you were getting info overload. Maybe he will let you private message him so you dont have to get the peanut gallery involved. (like me) Ha
Hang in there. It will be worth it.. I promise.
Patch is a good teacher He knows what he is talking about. That's why I backed off. I sensed you were getting info overload. Maybe he will let you private message him so you dont have to get the peanut gallery involved. (like me) Ha
Hang in there. It will be worth it.. I promise.
I appreciate all the input here. From each of you. Got the Hornady gauge in today but after 3 attempts at reading it and being interrupted I gave up. Two year old son got first haircut. Been wide open. If nothing else will measure once fired brass and reloaded rounds to see what those numbers are. Curious to see how much the shoulder is moving.
Dan
Dan
Danattherock said:
Ah yes a 2 year olds first haircut lol ... Well let me be the first to congratulate you on not raising a hippie lol.
Good luck with your findings , don't be afraid to take a step back if your mind isn't in it and try to put pen to paper once you find time to sort out your sizing issues.
I think I might be able to clear up a point of confusion here.
When a lot of old timers talk about sizing brass and loading for accuracy, they are talking about .308 and it's relatives shot through bolt action guns. Because of the minimal taper in .308 brass, full length resizing was avoided, and only neck sizing was done. The minimal taper meant that you could safely bump the shoulder with a neck sizing die. The idea was to get the brass to fit nicely into the chamber, and just bump the shoulder back a bit and size the neck down for tension. When someone tells you that full length resizing just wears out your brass faster, they are thinking in terms of .308 bolt guns, not .223 semi-autos. Semi-autos should be full length sized so they feed properly, bolt guns don't have feeding issues.
Keep this in mind when reading wisdom from old timers, they are not saying anything wrong, they are just saying it for a different gun. In the old world, .223 is a plinking round (probably really still is), you might shoot a ground hog with it for kicks, but no one shot .223 for accuracy.
If you make a sketch of your chamber with the cartridge taper exaggerated, then sketch in the cartridge, you should see right away what happens when you try to bump the shoulder with a full length die. Not only do you move the shoulder back, you also shrink the entire case because .223 has a lot of taper. Remember that the case expansion starts at the neck when you shoot. The firing pin will drive the cartridge forward, the neck expands and seals the chamber, then the brass stretches backward to fill the chamber. The only way to harden brass is to work it, and it will work harden very quickly if it is too small in the chamber. Once it becomes hard, the brass will tear because the neck is sealed up very tight until the bullet leaves the barrel.
This is the idea behind bump dies and small base dies. The bump die moves the shoulder back with out sizing the case, The small base die is for your tight match barrel, it sizes the brass down smaller with out having to cram it too deeply into the die and pushing the should back too far.
So in short, full length size so the cartridge fits the chamber, then bump the shoulder if needed with a bump die. You need some measuring tools to do this. Patch700 gave the details, and he is dead on right about getting this whole thing right.
as a final note, you should consider slugging the chamber with cerrosafe so you know exactly what you have. It won't help you with headspace, but it is cheap, easy, fun, and you will no longer have a second hand mystery barrel, and you will know other valuable things like freebore.
When a lot of old timers talk about sizing brass and loading for accuracy, they are talking about .308 and it's relatives shot through bolt action guns. Because of the minimal taper in .308 brass, full length resizing was avoided, and only neck sizing was done. The minimal taper meant that you could safely bump the shoulder with a neck sizing die. The idea was to get the brass to fit nicely into the chamber, and just bump the shoulder back a bit and size the neck down for tension. When someone tells you that full length resizing just wears out your brass faster, they are thinking in terms of .308 bolt guns, not .223 semi-autos. Semi-autos should be full length sized so they feed properly, bolt guns don't have feeding issues.
Keep this in mind when reading wisdom from old timers, they are not saying anything wrong, they are just saying it for a different gun. In the old world, .223 is a plinking round (probably really still is), you might shoot a ground hog with it for kicks, but no one shot .223 for accuracy.
If you make a sketch of your chamber with the cartridge taper exaggerated, then sketch in the cartridge, you should see right away what happens when you try to bump the shoulder with a full length die. Not only do you move the shoulder back, you also shrink the entire case because .223 has a lot of taper. Remember that the case expansion starts at the neck when you shoot. The firing pin will drive the cartridge forward, the neck expands and seals the chamber, then the brass stretches backward to fill the chamber. The only way to harden brass is to work it, and it will work harden very quickly if it is too small in the chamber. Once it becomes hard, the brass will tear because the neck is sealed up very tight until the bullet leaves the barrel.
This is the idea behind bump dies and small base dies. The bump die moves the shoulder back with out sizing the case, The small base die is for your tight match barrel, it sizes the brass down smaller with out having to cram it too deeply into the die and pushing the should back too far.
So in short, full length size so the cartridge fits the chamber, then bump the shoulder if needed with a bump die. You need some measuring tools to do this. Patch700 gave the details, and he is dead on right about getting this whole thing right.
as a final note, you should consider slugging the chamber with cerrosafe so you know exactly what you have. It won't help you with headspace, but it is cheap, easy, fun, and you will no longer have a second hand mystery barrel, and you will know other valuable things like freebore.
jonbearman
I live in new york state,how unfortunate !
Check out erik cortinas you tube videos.
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