308W Lyman 311291 and Red Dot
Good morning. I had an interesting thing happen to me last night while working up a load for my son. He bought a Savage M110 in 308 Winchester and thought it would be fun to shoot a cast bullet hunting this deer season. Most shots would be less than 100-yds, and I had a Lyman 311291 in the stables as well as a lot of Red Dot powder. After doing a lot of research and seeing several people using this combination, I loaded up a couple of rounds using 12-gr of powder and seating to the crimp groove with a bullet cast of #2 and sized to 0.311", checked, and lubed with Carnauba Blue. Cases were FL sized and trimmed, once-fired, with snug primer pockets and CCI LR Primers.
Seating any longer tended to get the front driving band into the throat and "stick" the bullet, so backing off to the crimp groove allowed the rounds to chamber easily. Nose of the boolit was 0.300" and driving bands were confirmed 0.311".
So last night we had 5 rounds that we were going to test out and see if we could get on paper. The first round loaded easily and shot as expected without much recoil. However, when he went to open the bolt, it was jammed and the bolt handle would not lift. I removed the action from the stock and also dropped the accu-trigger to verify the bolt lock was not damaged and engaged (which it was not). I probed the bolt head pin to ensure it was not broken and nothing was preventing the bolt from operating, and then proceeded to tap the bolt open and rearward.
In attempting to drive the bolt rearward, the rim of the cartridge sheared off and I was able to drive out the stuck case with a cleaning rod. The brass showed excessive pressure signs with a flattened primer and bulged brass around the bolt head. The extractor was damaged on removal, so I've had to order a replacement. I've never seen anything like this out of this rifle shooting factory ammunition. Any speculation on the cause? I'm going to disassemble the remaining rounds to try over, but this one has me baffled. Any help would be appreciated!