M1A chamber issue

[mkwafa]

I purchased a used stainless Springfield Armory NM medium weight barrel for my M1A. Once it was installed and test fired, the rounds were super hard to extract. When looking at the brass, they all had this ring around them case near the shoulder. Is it ruined? It looks deep enough that I do not think that it will clean up, but looking for second opinions or help.

It almost looks like it was originally short chambered, and the original owner may have screwed it up when chambering the rest of the way.

Any thoughts on possibly salvaging the barrel?

 

[nettle]

Factory ammo?

 

[mkwafa]

nope, but reloads that work flawlessly in other rifles

 

[Jon Leary]

Chip under the reamer

 

[jackieschmidt]

Bad reaming job. As was posted in #4, the reamer probably got overloaded with chips and cut a groove in the chamber. The brass expands in to it.

there is not much of a way to fix this. Sure, you could polish the heck out of it, but you would end up with a severely out of spec chamber.

 

[marazzi59]

Can you bore scope it, what's the outer dimensions of the barrel?

 

[AlNyhus]

Time for a chamber freshen up.

 

[akajun]

If that’s a ring in the chamber, and you keep shooting it, you will break extractors, possibly damage the bolt .
However I’m not so sure
Who did the install? Was it just spun on or was headspace checked? If it was then it’s prob a ring but all is not lost. There was a code system for the bolts that you could use to adjust headspace iirc it was a 5-8thou range and I’ve found some newer production commercial bolts that were 10thou proud
Possibly find a larger bolt and use a pull through reamer to clean it up.
If that doesn’t work then the only alternative is replacement as m14/garand barrels can’t be set back due to gas port / system timing and location

 

[mkwafa]

I am pretty sure that it is just going to be a very nice polished tomato stake.
I did bore scope it, and the ring is very noticeable. It is really a shame, the barrel looks like new.

 

[joshb]

It seems you found the reason why the guy sold it. Buying used barrels is a risky venture. I’ve done it, but only when it’s a small risk of $100 or less.