Chamber Reaming- Is it really that easy?

[RP]

yes please add the marks to let others know. A fellow soldier came home with my son and had a rifle he got from his Grandpa to hunt with. Had some ammo and wanted to check the scope and shoot the gun to make sure he was good. Long story short the rifle was not a 30/06 as mark but a 300. He had some blow back on his face which caused some bleeding but nothing to bad. Grandpa forgot he reamed it out and could have injured his grandson just because he did not mark the barrel.

[Char-Gar]

Here is my two cents on the issue.

If I wanted more powder capacity, I would get a .308. "Back in the day", I have re chambered, blown out and improved any number of cartridges. That is no longer an itch I need to scratch. If I want to drive a bigger nail, I get a bigger hammer.

When you rechamber a rifle, you may or may not get a ballistic improvement, but the dollar value of the rifle will go down.

[ohnomrbillk]

I rechambered my Handi-Rifle .30-30 Win to .30-30AI. It was very easy using a reamer from Reamer Rental folks. About a 20 minute job going very slow and checking/cleaning often. Once done, fireforming was a simple--just shoot your factory brass. Case headspaced on rim, don't deepen the rim recess and you're OK.

I shoot only cast boolits with this gun. The AI chamber allows me to use a bit more slow rifle powder to get higher velocity at lower pressures. I do shoot 180 grain LBT-LFN ACWW boolits at 2400fps with excellent accuracy. I also use the Lee .30-30 collet die to neck size brass without a problem. Cases seem to last forever.

Tag for project

[gzig5]

If you are really worried about getting a crush fit on an AI chamber, simply neck the cases up a caliber (for .308 I'd go to 8mm/.323) and then set the die up so the bolt will just close on the case. This should work for rimmed, belted, or rimless cases. On a rimmed or belted case that has too much headspace, do the neck up thing and then set the die so the case shoulder is set back only .001-.002" or a light crush if you prefer. When resizing, only push the shoulder back two or three thousandths. It now headspaces on the shoulder and excessive working of the brass and premature failure is avoided. The barrel setback on an AI is to ensure that a factory non-AI round fired in that chamber will not have excessive headspace.

[scrapcan]

you can also use the hornady neck sizer and dead length bullet seater dies to reload the AI cases. Those dies are just a bit less spendy that buying AI dies as they are special group dies in most cases, and cost significantly more.

[leadman]

For years I used a Hornady neck size die on my 30-30AI. Then Midway had a sale on a Lee 30-30AI sizing die. I think the reason they were on sale is they were out of spec. It sizes the body down too much.
So I'm back to my Hornady neck size die. If you need to size the body a 375Win die works great.

The only thing I would check out on the Savage 24 is if the barrel tapers too soon at the front of the chamber to extend the body forward safely.

I guess now that I have my little Craftsman lathe in operation I could polish out the die.