I have a issue with sizing 30-06 brass

[mdevlin53]

So i did some tinkering this morning.
Measured all my #2 shell holder and they are all within a half thousandth.
Took a thousands and a half off one with the mandrel and sandpaper trick. No joy.
Could not really determine a rub with the sharpie trick.
I annealed several cases and ran them through the die and that did the trick.

I suppose i should keep track of how many time i fire brass but i dont. Most of my brass is picked up at the range so new to me brass is added to the bin where i keep the 30-06 cases. so some may be once fired and some could be 3,4 5 or more times fired.
That would explain the random nature of cases not chambering sometimes but not all the time. so next time i have a bunch of empties i will setup and anneal them all to reset and then perhaps i will sort by times fired
Problem solved thanks for the help.

[fcvan]

All of my 30-06 brass is once fired range pick-up having watched them being fired from factory boxes and asking if I could pick them up. Lee dies (I have Dad's old Pacific dies as well) and all of my current fired brass is now twice fired. It should be noted I am loading cast which are dramatically much less pressure. I measure after firing and after re-sizing, and have not observed any measurable changes in the brass. As this was the first bottleneck case I started shooting cast with I am trying to apply things I've read here and to learn more.

The only thing I do a tad differently than most is how I lube. First, I deprime and wash my brass with dawn dish soap. I don't bother to dry them before putting into a plastic container with a lid. I dribble vegetable oil into the container and shake them to spread the oil. I then size pretty much immediately making sure to swipe my finger over the case mouth to deposit some lube for the expander ball. I haven't done more than 100 pieces at a time.

Anyway, the sized brass goes into a dawn soap wash with some lemon juice which removes the tarnish caused by the oxidized zinc in the brass. Dawn cuts grease, vegetable oil is immediately removed. The strained brass goes straight to the Lyman tumbler with ground walnut. Periodically, I add a tablespoon of Turtle Zip wash to the tumbler. The strained brass goes straight to the tumbler while wet. The water helps re-activate the zip wash and causes the walnut to swell and become rough again. Within an hour, the brass is shiny like new, the media is dry, and a light coating of the wax in the zip wash seals the brass from oxidization.

Once a year or so I put my walnut into a burlap bag with a zipper. Left to soak the debris sticking to the walnut frees up and the walnut swells up which takes away the smoothness caused by polishing. I rinse the bag until the soap and water runs clean and hang the bag outside. Call me cheap, I haven't bought new walnut for 9 years, but when I do, I get lizard bedding from Petco as it is cheaper than buying the same stuff sold as polishing media.

My reloads stay shiny like new indefinitely whereas a box of factory I was given tarnished sitting in the box stored in a cool dry place.

[mdevlin53]

Yesterday i annealed all 80 of my Federal cases dried them out and re-tumbled them. This morning i ran them through the FL sizer die and checked each one in the chamber on my rifle. They all chambered and extracted with ease. Federal seemed to have this problem more often than other brands. So I am convinced that the brass got work hardened from firing and the shoulder was not getting pushed back properly. I am glad this is solved as i hate to get to the range and not be able to chamber a number of rounds. the worst part was that i was working up a load and i had 4 different powder weights in 80 cases to shoot in two rifles. 10 shots per load per rifle. It may be silly but if i decide to shoot 10 round groups i hate it when there ar only 8 shots on the paper.

[Bazoo]

Thanks for the update. I didn't know need of annealing would cause sizing issues.

[Big Boomer]

All the above suggested possibilities cover the issue pretty well. However, there is one possibility that has not been addressed. I was having difficulty with my Winchester Model 670 .30-06 years ago (Winchester made the M670 for only a few years and it is a gussied down M70). I followed the directions that came with my Lyman dies and was having delayed firing. I was actually hearing the firing pin hit the primer, pushing the case forward, then the delayed ignition. Bob Milek, who wrote for Guns & Ammo (if I recall correctly), was still alive at that time and wrote an article explaining that all reloading dies are not milled equally. He said that when the reaming die is run into the sizing die blank to cut the die for sizing, sometimes the reamer is run in a little further than or a little less than some of the others that are cut. In the case of my Lyman die set, the reamer had not been run into the sizing die far enough and I was setting the shoulder back too far by following the printed instructions that came with the die set. After reading the article, I took some factory ammo and fired it in my rifle. Then I carefully sized the brass by allowing the brass to enter the defective die only to the neck/shoulder junction and that ended my problem. You could have a sizing die that the reamer was run into the die body a couple of thousandths too far, thus producing the undesirable extra length in your sized cartridge cases. I. E., it may not be a problem with your cases or shell holder but the sizing die itself that may need to be shortened a couple of thousandths. But be very careful to establish that this is the problem, for once removed the sizing die length cannot be "put back." Big Boomer

[trixter]

should have mentioned the die is screwed down so that the bottom of the die contacts the shell holder.

That might not be enough, after you deprime/resize the cartridge, check it in your chamber, turn the die down a very little at a time, until the bolt can be closed with ease.