There's a lot to be said for the strength of a bolt gun when an even stronger man shoves that bolt forward, then cams the handle down. A buddy of mine who volunteers at a local public shooting range brought me a piece of brass back one day. It looked really funky, with a shoulder and no neck. Holding it up at eye height, he calmly asked...
"Do you know what that is?"
My response: "What in the...?"
"That's a .308-.270..."
"What the...?"
"I heard a big boom from a guy on the line, who then couldn't get his bolt handle open. We finally used a mallet to pound the handle open, and it was everything we could do to get his action to extract the case...then this came out. He had jammed a .308 cartridge into his .270 Win rifle's chamber, and it actually forced the .30 cal bullet downrange, with no damage to the blaster."
The .308 bullet had fit right into the leade of the .270, and the charge forced it into the lands and out the barrel, with significant recoil. He's lucky that sucker didn't let go on him. The .308 neck filled nicely into the .270 shoulder, fire-forming a case with no neck-just a weird-looking shoulder and a hole at the end.
LRRPF52
I'd like to see pics of that!
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Joined: Mar 2011
LR1955 Wrote:OOB:
I always chamber a couple of pieces of brass after sizing just to make sure it cycles. This includes fired brass, bolt rifles, etc. It takes a few seconds and is a good check to make sure nothing has changed.
LR1955
LR1955's advice is sound. For the AR platform, I always chamber a couple pieces of resized brass before loading a bunch. Brass work hardens as it is plastically deformed from firing and resizing. Even if your die is set up to perfectly set back the shoulder today, it may not work on the same brass a couple of firings from now. Many times I have had to slightly screw in my die farther to continue to get 0.003" shoulder set back as the brass work hardened over multiple firings. For the Grendel, my die setting is different for Lapua and Hornady brass due to the different strengths of the brass. I "float" my sizing dies using an o-ring under the lock ring, and I put a reference mark on the die lock ring and the press. That way I can slightly adjust my resizing die setting without having to loosen the lock ring. Also the floating die helps with reducing run-out and misalignment.
Best,
PA
Somewhere I still have the interview he did with Playboy and the AP News report from the teletype from the morning he died. The man was a true artist and someone I wish I could have met and talked with.
