Swaged 170fbhp and the 300blackout

[rossrods]

Hello gents of more knowledge, I had my first little hiccup with my beautiful 170fbhp swaged bullets in my 300blackout. The other day I had no issues everything was feeding well Fps was 1400at muzzle. Powder is IMR4227 13.0 grains. Coal, which I have pushed out into the lands for my AR is 2.165. Cases are cut mixed head stamp mostly lake city cut down to saami specs and checked with wilson case gauage for the 300aac. Primer pockets are swaged with dillon primer pocket swager (thing-a-ma-gigger). Swaged bullets have been checked and rechecked on the outer dims. Dies are R-Corbin's, Anyways getting details of load out of way. My problem came in with putting the round into battery. First one usually feed quite well. I was shooting with my son, so we were only putting 5 in the mag at a time. Had a brand new scope on so I was shooting out to 25 yards. Don't laugh Im only 5ft tall and have a spine diease so today was not a 100yrd walking day. Anyways I put two almost on top of each other no big deal for being so close. Accuracy with round is on for me, and my shooting skills. Plus recoil is managable with my spine issue. But the feed issue, quite embarrassing boasting like a proud cock to my 16 yr old son about look at my beautiful bullets.
Went to a long winded details of my perfect bullets, now to the question seeking knowledge. With the said info above what causes feed issues with bullet in AR'S . Me-plat I will confirm but it's tight as I can get it without it getting stuck. Does AR'S, have feeding issues with hollow points. Gun was cleaned and lubed. So not sure why this was happening any ideas? or is their to many variables to nail down problem. I do have some sierra 150 boat tails soft points that I've compared dims to. They feed fine. The difference is weight and the hollow point.

[runfiverun]

you'll have to describe what the jam is.
is it going straight forward and hitting the feed ramp?
is it popping the nose up and hitting the top of the barrel?
is it just not going into battery?
one is the feed ramp
one is the mag lips
one is the cases shoulder usually
it could also be the amount of gas volume you are making with your powder or the load is a tick low.

[rossrods]

I've been going thru this in my mine. First round goes into battery and fires. 2nd round would not be stripped from mag. Totally missed it, so is this a indication that the bolt carrier group doesn't have enough blow back pressure to drive it far enough back to strip the next round off the magazine. Also with one it stripped but was caddy wompus. Bullet nose was at a high angle and it was somewhat caught in their at a angle wedged between mag and feed ramp. (Hitting top of barrel) You know, the sierras are near 1800fps. What's your thoughts load is to light?

[alfloyd]

The trouble I have with my 300 Blackout is that it will feed the cartridge from the right side of the magazine and jam when trying to feed the cartridge from the left side of the mag. I am using the Lyman 311291 boolit. It goes point up and gets caught with the bolt on the side of the cartridge. When I drop the mag and release the pressure on the round it drops out the mag well.
What do I need to check to fix this problem?

Lafaun

[runfiverun]

ross I think your load is just a it too light.
you just ain't pushing the bcg back far enough to strip the round and ram it home.

la faun I'd try a little shorter oal.
it could be the mag lip is a little off too, not quite letting the rounds nose pop up high enough [or pushed to the center where the 'ramp' is] to be presented to the chamber properly.

one of my lever guns does this same thing with a short round because the round is pushed forward before the nose of the boolit can be aimed correctly, so it jams against the feed ramp.

I'm by no means an AR type guru so I'm basing my answers off what I have run into with my AR type rifles before.

[rossrods]

Thanks river I will increase this, and let everyone know results. 1500fps hopefully will be the magic number. With the ballastic calculator this seems to be a better match for trajectory out to 150-175 yards, for the 300aac. Meaning less bullet drop that I'm capable of compensating for with my skill set.

[clodhopper]

My old mags that work fine with 223 seem to have weak springs when loaded to capacity with blackout 247 grain ammo.

[Wolftracker]

I'm having something of a similar problem with my AR in 223. 40 years ago, in the Marines, I was taught to make sure those little gas rings in the bolt had their gaps off set from each other, but that doesn't seem to be it. I was also taught to go light on the lube on the bolt carrier group, which may actually be my problem. Nowadays they say to lube the carrier pretty well, so I'll try that at the range. Anyway, it will feed the first one from battery and sometimes fail to close completely on the second and doesn't fully close if I pull the charging handle fully back and release either. I don't think it's my open tip bullets. It's likely lube, powder that burns dirty, seating depth, magazine or possibly case sizing mistakes. AR's can be touchy. Could it be that some powders that ordinarily burn clean at normal charge weights, leave more residue with light charges?

[rossrods]

Wolf not sure about the hiccups your having but u may know this. I use the Wilson case cage on every case just to make sure. My son in Law had a accidental discharge. I'm saying this, but in all honesty I think it was a slam fire. Number 1 problem was he was having problems like your describing with the round not going into full battery. He was tapping the foward assist on live rounds and one went off. Thank God the muzzle was pointed down in the garage. Needless to say bullet shot thru table top and 2 2x4's lodging into the concrete 2" deep. I wasn't there but heard everything about it. Verdict is still out and will be forever on wether or not it was a accudentiL discharge or slam fire. I can for sure say the bolt was having problems going into battery and even discharging round. I got the AR and was using rounds with no powder no primers just correct cases sized per case gauage and bullet seated. As mentioned above everything was completely not right. The gun had only been shot maybe 10 times. I took it apart and lightly sanded BCG steel wooled and polished it to an extremely slick finish. Did the same up inside the upper. I did notice an abundance of carbon in the extractor so I took apart reinstalled and oiled real well. I spent probably two hours working with the action of BCG and it finally worked like a charm. My thoughts are as rare as slam fires are I think the firing pin was gummed up with oil and carbon and caused it to get stuck in a foward most position causing it to discharge. One might argue this is operator failure due to not cleaning properly. AD not a slam fire. But any event thank the good lord he spared my family the grief of loosing my grandson who was right above him asleep in his bedroom. Morale of the story is always expect the unexpected it's hard to drive that point into others but I have lived thru it with a positive outcome. I know there's others that hasn't been so lucky and my heart and soul goes out to those individuals. With the polishing of the BCG and upper this fixed the problem. Then a couple of hours with a come to Jesus meeting with a young man about using live rounds to cycle his gun in the house. I think it scared him enough to have a life long lesson. I'm no expert but if you have some rounds with no primers or powder that's the only way I would run trouble on a gun that's not going into battery. Mine is doing something similar so I will be figuring it out soon. My action is smooth so I'm pretty sure it's a powder issue. I'm going to clean extractor tomorrow and work up another load to check all that's within my knowledge. Becareful and expect the unexpected. Be safe everyone.

[runfiverun]

good point.
powders have a pressure zone where they burn their cleanest.
the faster the powder the lower that pressure generally is.
I have worked up unknown loads from scratch watching for the powder to start burning clean as an indicator of pressure.
once I hit the zone where the powder started burning clean I knew I was getting into the area where I needed to start taking smaller steps and looking for pressure signs.

[rossrods]

Hey River do powder manufactures give out the magic burn rate, for their particular powders. I guess I'm trying to say if you look at the load data for any said bullet maker. They usually have a bold printed number for (case in point) sierra 300 aac 150grn says best load accuracy/hunting is 17.5grns of imr4227 coal but at the same time that's also max load. The other thing is their coal is 2.105, that's .060 shorter than my sweet spot with my lands/AR. Their load data for 170 grn bullet is zero but they have load info for 168 and 175. 168 lists no info for the 4227 in either weight. Still thou their coal is still 2.105. Which I guess should relate to higher pressures per given volume of powder rate. With all this being said my AR more than likely is short stroking due to the weight/ powder ratios. To increase the velocity/Fps and solve short stroking issues,couldn't one shorten their coal to bring up pressures. The other side of coin would be to use my sweet spot land length 2.165 and bring up the pressures with more powder. In theory this would solve BCG not going back far enough to strip bullet off mag. Still keeping the bullet in my lands and keeping said bullet very accurate per shooters ability. I reread this, I have a serious genetic brain flaw. Sounds like I'm telling but I'm actually asking? Also how in the world do big bullet makers test for the perfect load with their bullets. I don't think their is a way to tell burn rate. It's almost like some info is missing from the powder makers giving this perfect number. I've never seen it, should be in print thou. Ok I truly do stand corrected. Found the info at http://www.hodgdonreloading.com/data/rifle. It's 15.8grains/1672 Fps at 41,500 cups starting load. So yes I've learned something here I'm at 1400fps and 13.0grns a good bit off. This helps explain the snow ball effect of powder not correctly burnning, causing short stroking, excessive carbon build up on extractor and firing pin , all leading to bigger problems for given AR.

[Wolftracker]

I'll look more closely at things with this rifle. I have used the forward assist a time or two. It is a Remington R-15 with some sort of coating on the inside surface of the upper receiver. Could require some special lube. I bought it used and there was no manual. Thanks for the reminder. One can't be too careful!!

[runfiverun]

wolf Remington will mail you a new manual if you ask them for one.

the powder company's don't tell you the optimum pressure for their powders however through careful observation you can determine pretty dang closely what those pressures are.
we know many of the pistol powders are used in shot-shell loads that run in the 9-10k range
and look at 2400 in the several cartridges it's used in [44 mag 357m try it from the published down a bit you'll see]

Richard lee also published a reduction factor for several powders and scatters it throughout his book.
it's actually quite close as far as velocity and pressure are concerned.
I done a reverse ladder test with 4895 in the 308 and compared his predictions with my math work-ups and actual shooting over my chrony and they [all three] were close enough to have faith in them working with due diligence.

[Swede44mag]

If you can get them buy some factory ammo with the same bullet weight.
Fire a few to find out if you are having problems with your rifle or if it is a reloading problem.

I once missed out on a shot on the biggest buck I ever had in range with my 30-06 Remington about 10feet under me.
I aimed at the buck the rifle failed to fire and I could not get the loaded shell out the buck ran off the limb I was standing on broke
it was not a good day.

I later tried some factory ammo with no problems at my friend’s suggestion.
I then bought a Wilson head case gage to find out i had pushed the shoulder
back to far the firing pin couldn’t hit the primer and the extractor couldn’t grab the shell.

Just something to think about.

[rossrods]

Thanks swede. I do have some factory, I use a wilson case gauge to check every round. I'll try that today. I did break the gun down. After 10 shots with the issues mentioned above gun looked like it was shooting black powder lol. Pretty nasty. I'm going to bump up the load a bit, also I'm going to change mags as well.

[Swede44mag]

My Dad has a Browning A-Bolt in 243 WSM (probably asking what does this have to do with an AR-15) I loaded his shells to the bullets touched the rifeling
the OAL was not so long as they wouldnt fit in the magazine. When we took the rifle to the range he started having feeding problems I was at a loss as to what was going on. Dad asked a gunsmith what he thought was the problem. The gunsmith said even though the shells fit in the mag they were loaded to long.
Dad checked the length against some factory shells wrote down the measurement I seated them the same length and the feeding problem went away.

Maybe your feeding problem is from the bullets being seated to long and making it jamb when trying to cycle a round.

Check it out best of luck

[rossrods]

Life is funny, issue is fixed solution was all the above lol. Let's see I changed mags, up'd powder load, inadvertently changed oal by. .020. So honestly I'm not sure which one can take 100% credit for the solution. Week powder drop more than likely. Other things I did definitely had a impact. So to sum it up. I went 15.7 grns imr 4227 at 1600fps coal 2.145, changed mags from 30 to 20 round mag. Cycled fine shot well. Even got to use by bushnell throw down optics. Fun stuff.

[bfuller14]

rossrods,
What do you think of trying your 2.165 coal with your new powder charge?

[rossrods]

Hey 14 ya I ran 2.165, 2.160,2.155,2.150,2.145, they all ran perfect. Spread was 1.600 or so. Honestly that's not bad for me. My spine issue, shooting from bench restricts my ribs and makes it hard to breathe. Feels like a broken rib all the time. Needless to say I still enjoy all this. The load was still running a little weak compared to IMR's Fps. The little bit that it was off 50fps is pretty darn close. The biggest thing I hate, is. I was really wanting to get down to 1200fps for reduced load shooting to help my spine out. I can feel a huge difference in recoil, ya I know buy a hydraulic buffer thing a ma-gig-er. I will one day. I have a armalite AR10 I'm absolutely terrified to shoot. Neurosurgeon said don't attempt. Even yesterday after shooting 15 rounds and walking to the target I was down till the next mid morning. You ever seen The movie Rudy. Norte Dame football movie. That was me in high school. First string full back to varsity first string defense. Made the perfect practice dummy LoL. Used to run a 4-5,4-6(40).Now it's a 4 minute 40. Oh the glory days. Da_n old age.

[runfiverun]

you'll have to switch to a slower powder to make the velocity lower and keep the ejection.
lil'gun, 4198, or 1680 would be worth a try.

[rossrods]

Hey Runfiverun, (I called you river earlier)opps!!. And to everyone else, thank you for all the useful inputs, I will get some of the powder you suggested when I make my next powder run.

[runfiverun]

Fiver works.
if you ordered from corbin I know his wife has had some health issues and things are going slowly for him.
I got some jackets from rce a bit back and they come pretty quickly, but I think that was more a matter of timing than anything else.
I have been running cast boolits through my little 300 b.o. recently and they are doing super good.
this little rifle has a 1-7 twist barrel so it's amazing at 50 yds right now but not so good at 100 yds with the 1300 fps loads I'm running.
I think I'm slowing down into the sub-sonic area right about there and things are going a bit wonky ,plus I'm seeing some vertical dispersion on the target too.
so maybe a powder change or a primer change is in order.

[Chuck Walla]

rossrods, I think if I was you; I'd be looking at .223 for an AR instead of 300 Blackout. Sure would be easier on your back. Also, if you keep shooting it, why not try cast with a gas check. It would be easier on the wallet. At the speed you're shooting it, you probably don't need those expensive jackets all the time.