Need some advice on 308 win loads and neck soot.

[r bose]

Mr Underwood

45g of varget is max but in a Winshester case as per the Hodgdon manual. Lapua cases are heavier and have less internal space so 45g is gooing to be over max hence the crunching of powder. Also, I wouldn't get the bullet touching or jammed into the lands of the barrel because this will also increase chamber pressure.

 

[Mr Underbridge]

Mr Underwood

45g of varget is max but in a Winshester case as per the Hodgdon manual. Lapua cases are heavier and have less internal space so 45g is gooing to be over max hence the crunching of powder. Also, I wouldn't get the bullet touching or jammed into the lands of the barrel because this will also increase chamber pressure.

is 0.008 too close?

 

[asauer]

.008" is fine if that's where you did your load development at.
About the primer flowing... I have to agree with catshooter. If you're not experiencing any piercing of primers or issues, it's merely a cosmetic issue. I have several rifles that do this and I've never had one issue. While it may look unsettling at first...
Also, a 0.342" neck isn't something I would consider a tight neck. I agree on your neck clearance between loaded round and chamber neck dimension being the cause of soot. Don't worry about it and shoot away.

 

[bigedp51]

Mr Underbridge

The palma 95 chamber does have a tighter neck but they also come in varying throat lengths and diameters. But I also found two other links with poster with your same problem, I would Google "palma 95 chamber" and "palma 95 chamber dimensions" and do a little reading.

I have soot on my necks on many of my loads because I have brass OCD and don't like punishing my brass for very little gains.

Below is a quickload guesstimate of my practice loads for my AR15 rifles for 100 yards and less shooting and the cases have soot on the necks and the load is well below maximum.

 

[savagedasher]

Your brass is sized to .334 what is the neck size after shooting? If the difference between loaded and fired is more then .005 you will always have soot on the neck Larry

 

[r bose]

I've always started about 25 thousands off the lands and find Sierra 175g bullets love a bit a jump into the lands. Also, this gives you some wiggle room to account for small inconsistencies in the bullets themselves. As good as bullet manufactures are, I find not every bullet in the box are exact.

Also other things to consider, Varget will vary from lot to lot. Some lots "quicker" and others "slower". So getting a charge out of a manual might not work out.

Military brass and Laupa brass are heavy (less internal room). When using either, I automatically reduce charges by 1 to 11/2 grains.

I've not turned necks but I know other who have and they only take off enough material to "clean up" the neck. Probably about 40 to 50% of the neck gets touched and the rest is not by the cutter. If you have a specific OD you're trying to get to on your necks, then you'd touch all parts of the neck with the cutter.

If I were shooting your combo of components, I'd start a 42g and work up in .3g increments looking for my best group and perssure signs along the way.

 

[M-61]

Is the cratering going to cause a problem down the road?
Would it be safe/acceptable to move the bullet closer to the rifling some more if it doesnt degrade accuracy?
Honestly what I need to do is probably get a better scale. I have old RCBS 505 that has not been treated well. RCBS charge master in my future but I need to drop by my local gun store and see what kind of scales they have in stock and double check my weights.

I can't get past ""505 scale that has not been treated well".
I wonder how consistent it is?
And there are many versions of "NOT TREATED WELL".
Would be nice to know what the load is actually I would think.

 

[bigedp51]

Mr Underwood

Your only problem is chamber pressure and exceeding the elastic limits of the brass causing the brass to start to flow. This leads to short case life with over sized primer pockets. You are using expensive Lapua brass and abusing it and Lapua brass is one of the hardest cases in the base web area. And your case head swipes in this posting are telling you the main story in your posting.

If you want to see soot on your case necks all the time then buy a 30-30 Winchester with a max chamber pressure of 38,000 cup or 42,000 psi.

 

[bigedp51]

I can't get past ""505 scale that has not been treated well".
I wonder how consistent it is?
And there are many versions of "NOT TREATED WELL".
Would be nice to know what the load is actually I would think.

Very good point M61, after posting this I'm getting up to clean my glasses.

Aim High Air Force

 

[Ggmac]

again I agree with Catshooter . No improvement in performance by bushing that Remmy problem . I think the OP may have turned the necks a bit much on a Saami chamber .
If the bushing route makes you think your shooting more accurately , than by all means , do it .

 

[CatShooter]

No... those are caused by oversized firing pin holes and are nothing to worry about.

Have you annealed the necks - if they are hard, they do not seal the chamber well. That looks like the problem.

+1 for the annealing, CatShooter.

I've a Rem 700 in .308 that gave me sooty necks to varying degrees with all powders. Only after I started annealing after every firing did the soot problem disappear.

This is brand new Lapua brass we are talking about.

Anneal them...

Neck turning work hardens the neck.s Back in the dark ages, I neck turned a bunch (over two thousand - 222 Mag and 22-250) cases for a PD shoot that never came to fruition

So I stored the ammo, for the next trip - three years later, I checked the rounds and more than 30% of them had "T" splits in the necks. I pulled all the rounds, and tossed the split cases - and annealed the good ones.

That is when I started annealing... and never had a split in any case since.

So anneal them. It is easy.

 

[rminut]

BigEd,
Not to flame you, most of the time your posts are informative but the post about varying lengths and neck sizes for a Palma'95 is completely false. THERE IS ONLY ONE PALMA '95 design, any deviations from it have another name. simple as that. The reamer has a .342 neck diameter and a .050 freebore and you cannot chamber a 175SMK seated out to 2.80". If you don't believe me then email Al Warner at Warner Tool Company for a print. He was the armorer on the 1995 Palma Team. Sometimes the chamber has been called the Warner'95 because he is so closely tied with the chamber. Just because you can find a print labeled Palma'95 with different numbers doesn't mean it's correct. There is only one design.
Too many people think that 2.8" works for everything, but it doesn't. The Palma chamber is very short, designed to shoot the 2155 SMK. As a matter of fact, the 2155@2.80" will not even chamber in a NEW Palma 95.

It's a great chamber but there is a lot of missinformation going around.

as to the sooty necks, both my rifles do it. no affect on the accuracy so, shoot away.

 

[Mr Underbridge]

Well Ill be a monkeys uncle, i did not clean up the necks after turning. I took steel wool to a couple loaded rounds and fired em, almost no soot, just some usual debri.
Cleaned my scales bearings with alchohol, put my knife edges under a loupe they were jacked up.
Used a very fine polishing stone to fix them.

 

[bigedp51]

BigEd,
Not to flame you, most of the time your posts are informative but the post about varying lengths and neck sizes for a Palma'95 is completely false. THERE IS ONLY ONE PALMA '95 design, any deviations from it have another name. simple as that. The reamer has a .342 neck diameter and a .050 freebore and you cannot chamber a 175SMK seated out to 2.80". If you don't believe me then email Al Warner at Warner Tool Company for a print. He was the armorer on the 1995 Palma Team. Sometimes the chamber has been called the Warner'95 because he is so closely tied with the chamber. Just because you can find a print labeled Palma'95 with different numbers doesn't mean it's correct. There is only one design.
Too many people think that 2.8" works for everything, but it doesn't. The Palma chamber is very short, designed to shoot the 2155 SMK. As a matter of fact, the 2155@2.80" will not even chamber in a NEW Palma 95.

It's a great chamber but there is a lot of missinformation going around.

as to the sooty necks, both my rifles do it. no affect on the accuracy so, shoot away.

I didn't see anyone criticizing clowdis in post #3 at Benchrest Central so I took his word for it. In other postings the Palma'95 reamer was custom modified for the shooters, and any reamer can be modified and the name changed but they are all based on the Palma'95 reamer. And the same post tells about the US Veterans team having to modify their Palma'95 chambers with a longer throat to fire the furnished ammo.

So forgive me if I trusted the word of someone at Benchrest Central. : And the reamer "WAS" modified for the bullet being used which means modified throats.

.308 Palma chamber reamer?
http://benchrest.com/showthread.php?66956-308-Palma-chamber-reamer

 

[jonbearman]

I still think and know that bushing the bolt is a wise decision. My primers were doing the same thderate load of rel15 and I popped a primer or two and then it was down hill from there. To say it wasn't worth it is ridiculous. If you had it done and the primers extruded like his then greg tannel didn't do it and you should of sent it back. I think you like to be the authority on this and it is clear you never had it done by greg. My bolt came back square and perfectly flat and no more primers extruding in a huge dumb chamfer that is way out of spec as far as I am concerned. There are a lot of people who had problems on this site as well as 3 other sites and they all chose his work with zero complaints.I respectfully completely disagree with your way of looking at this problem.

 

[CatShooter]

I still think and know that bushing the bolt is a wise decision. My primers were doing the same thderate load of rel15 and I popped a primer or two and then it was down hill from there. To say it wasn't worth it is ridiculous. If you had it done and the primers extruded like his then greg tannel didn't do it and you should of sent it back. I think you like to be the authority on this and it is clear you never had it done by greg. My bolt came back square and perfectly flat and no more primers extruding in a huge dumb chamfer that is way out of spec as far as I am concerned. There are a lot of people who had problems on this site as well as 3 other sites and they all chose his work with zero complaints.I respectfully completely disagree with your way of looking at this problem.

I am sorry, butit has nothing to do with being an authority (I have only sent him one bolt)... but I did send a bolt to Greg, and that is my experience, and my opinion.

 

[Joe R]

Comrade Terry said:
Quote from: CatShooter on Yesterday at 01:07 PM

No... those are caused by oversized firing pin holes and are nothing to worry about.

Have you annealed the necks - if they are hard, they do not seal the chamber well. That looks like the problem.

+1 for the annealing, CatShooter.

+1

Mr. Underbridge,
I used to have the same blackened necks on my 308 Savage when I first started handloading. For me it turned out that I my neck turning mandrel was a wee bit too lose and did not turn necks completely even. Once I fixed my mandrel problem the sooty necks went away and I haven't had any in several years. I also started annealing around that time so I can't say 100% that it was all neck turning or annealing. It could be both.

Regarding your "stout load", I'm currently using 44.4 grains of Varget to push a 200 grain Berger hybrid, so it seems fair to say that I'm probably having higher pressure than you (my action is a Remy clone). Though you may be over 'book max" most everyone shooting 1K at my range is hanging in that neighborhood, the difference is that they are using Lapua Palma brass with small primers (can take more pressure). I'm a bit of a maverick because I use Lake City brass and I'm not getting pressure signs on my brass. When I was using the regular Lapua brass I was seeing pressure marks, lose primer pockets and head expansion.

I hope this is of some help.

Joe

 

[rminut]

BigEd,
I see your point and the only reason I feel compelled to chime in is because people throw the word Palma around far too much in todays 215 grain .308 world, if you know what I mean. People that don't know the differences can get themselves in a overpressure situation in a hurry.

 

[/VH]

Underbridge,

Are you cleaning the sizing lube off your cases, in my experience, cases with lube left on them tend to foul worse than clean ones? Also, is the chamber neck clean and dry?

 

[Mr Underbridge]

Yeah I made sure to tumble off the lube, but you know what I left a good amount of CLP in chamber and the bore and I did not swab it out before shooting.
So either cleaning up the necks with steel wool helped it seal or maybe me cleaning up the barrel when I went shooting the 2nd time did the trick.
I never thought about the oil in the chamber, thank you.
As the germans say the devil is in the details.