Tight Lever Closing

[Fester]

Hey Guys

Just an Aussie who loves shooting and hunting as much as you blokes but have a problem with one of my many 30-30 cast loads, tried searching but it is hard with the forum being so big, so will try posting a thread.

The problem is the final bit of the lever closing is very tight and seems to be only on my high gas-checked loads and maybe just with the one factory-bought projectile.
They are a powder-coated 165gr projy made more for .308, but the same .309 size that goes well in my Rossi with other cast pills from HRBC.

I tried the .308 projies as they don't do a 30-30 pill that is cast to fit the gas checks.
I machine a larger flat nose so there is no risk in the tube mag.
I then tried trimming some cases 20 thou shorter like they do for the soft plastic tip Hrdy FXT pills to see if it could be the different-shaped nose but they still caused the issue about the same.
It's not all shots but always get some.

I should have unloaded one of the problem rounds for close inspection but always forget in the heat of the moment shooting at the range.

If someone knows what things can cause that final lever closing tightness, it would also be appreciated.
It is like that end bit where it pushes the little lock-up lever in to allow firing if that is the correct terminology.

I don't have too many of the .308 projies left and will stick with the propper 30-30 ones in future.
I now have a mini-lathe and can do 2 cuts to fit the gas-checks.
I don't remember if I still get the odd tight one or not when doing the high loads with the propper 30-30 projies.

I definitely don't get the issue when loading normal jacketed or cast projies with no gas checks.
I even worked up to near full load with the casties without checks but there is a point where they lose accuracy and the risk of leading so no point going that hot with them.

I don't hunt with the casties as the Skinner peep sight is left zeroed for 150gr full jacketed loads.
I just use them for cheaper plinking and offhand practice where I like the rifle to kick the same as when I am out hunting with full loads.

Any help and or tips would be much appreciated.

Cheers

[GregLaROCHE]

First try seating the boolit a little deeper.

[Bazoo]

Howdy and welcome to cb.gl forum.

In my Winchester 94 30-30, which happens to have a tight throat, if I use a powder coated bullet thats a bore riding design, it will engrave the rifling on the nose, causing hard chambering. It also causes the bullets to get stuck in the throat when extracting a live round.

When sizing bullets, only the diameter of the bearing surface changes, but because the PC increases the size everywhere the nose also becomes larger in diameter. The same bullets, when traditionally lubed do not cause any issue in my gun.

There is no reason that a gas check would cause the problem you're having.

[Winger Ed.]

Paint one of your loaded rounds with a sharpie, drop it straight into the chamber, close the lever, then carefully extract it.
It will tell you where it is hanging up.

[Fester]

Sounds like a plan winger although I have never achieved much in results painting projies for other cals.

I am pretty sure I would have tried seating them deeper as a first step but will do it again to be sure and rule out everything I can.

I didn't think it could be much to do with the gas checks but couldn't be sure.
I fit them by pushing them through a Lee bullet sizing die and it doesn't greatly affect the powder coating so everything else should be good.

I didn't realize it was my first post as I have lurked a bit and would have done an intro but just thought to ask here after the shorter cases made no change.
I seem to have it pinpointed to the .308 pills and suspect the nose shape must be doing it.
Was stupid not ejecting a tight one at the range as marks would tell the tale.

[Bazoo]

Before warned to watch for powder going everywhere in your action if you eject a tight one and it pulls the bullet.

I checked one in the house... and when I ejected it, powder slung all over and I got a mess of it in my action, which is about like having a handful of sand in your action.

[NSB]

It could be the shoulder isn’t being set back in the sizing die.

[Winger Ed.]

I doubt it's a problem with the gas checks.

If a sized brass goes in & out OK, I look to the length or boolit design.
If a cycled loaded round has light marks where the booliit has hit the rifling
and just scratched off the powder coat, you can seat it deeper, or in some cases it's OK.
With jacketed, that can get you in trouble real fast, but with cast- it might not be bad.

Read up on 'bore riding' bullet designs.

[Dusty Bannister]

You have not mentioned exactly what cast bullet form you are using, only the weight. You mention machining the nose of the bullet flat to prevent a problem in the tube magazine of the rifle. If you are doing this in a lathe, is it 3 or 4 jaw chuck? Any chance, if using a chuck, are you careless in tightening things down and distorting the bullet to alter the diameter of the body? That could be where you get the random chambering issue.

[farmbif]

I once had this problem. took a while to figure it out. there were no rifle marks on end of projectile when forced into battery and then ejected.and brass was perfect in a Lyman shell gauge, turned out to be the sizing die was not adjust right. had it screwed down a bit too much and it was just slightly crushing shoulder of brass, so little it could not be seen. if there are no marks on end of projectile after forcing shell in and then ejecting try just loading your resized brass into gun and make sure it loads smooth.

[littlejack]

Fester
Welcome to the CastBoolits.
Lots of great reccomendations. Buy process
of elimination, it assuredly will be one or more
of these. Either it's the case not being sized down far enough, and the shoulder not being pushed back or the boolit is seated out to far. You can get a lot of information with a black
sharpie pen.

[BLAHUT]

What littlejack said bullet out too far, brass not sized properly, tight base, lots of answers with a sharpie ??? Look real close allover ?? after ejecting a tight round ???

[Kai]

OK here's my 2 cents. Since you tried seating the bullet deeper preventing the nose of the bullet from engaging the rifling, a sized case chambers without issue, and not all loaded cases are difficult to chamber the one thing you did not mention is crimp. My guess is your cases are not all the same length causing some to get more of a crimp than others. This will cause a bulge near the case mouth which will make chambering difficult.

[atr]

Kai brought up a good point.

[elmacgyver0]

I had this problem with my .45-70 Henry, it turned out to be the powder coating.
Don't get me wrong, I love powder coating, but the nose of the bullet gets too large with the powder coating.
Do everything the same, but tumble lube instead of powder coat. See if the problem goes away.
I will turn down the nose a bit, then powder coat the next time I load for my .45-70.
Noticed the same problem with my trap doors.

[indian joe]

Howdy and welcome to cb.gl forum.

In my Winchester 94 30-30, which happens to have a tight throat, if I use a powder coated bullet thats a bore riding design, it will engrave the rifling on the nose, causing hard chambering. It also causes the bullets to get stuck in the throat when extracting a live round.

When sizing bullets, only the diameter of the bearing surface changes, but because the PC increases the size everywhere the nose is becomes larger in diameter. The same bullets, when traditionally lubed do not cause any issue in my gun.

There is no reason that a gas check would cause the problem you're having.

would be my guess - ditch the lipstick and go back to a grease groove lube

[Fester]

I did a test in the garage and the Hawkesbury River Bullet Company projectiles that are made for 30-30 chamber and eject fine after I machine the base and fit gas checks.

The problem was only the ones they cast for .308 as they all had some tightness feel on lever closing and could also feel it when ejecting the unfired cartridges.
I painted a tight one with a white paint pen and did get 2 rifling type marks much further down than I would have expected.

The .308 projies are indeed a much different shape and I can see a ridge-lip on the 30-30 deigned pills.
Will try to add the photo and will just have to stick with machining the proper 30-30 projies to fit the gas checks.
Will buy another 400 box soon as I now know and just scrap the .308 ones I have fitted with checks.

Thanks for all the tips guys as it got me down to the bench and sorted.

[Fester]

I couldn't get the photo to load and my internet has slowed to dial-up speeds, it should come good in a few days.

Like our draconian gun laws after a mass shooting in 1996, everything our useless govt touches just turns to ****.
They recently did my street with the new fiber cable national broadband installation and it still slows down to pathetic slow speeds and drop-outs.
We only got mobile phone reception without walking up the hill about 6 years back, after the big bushfire, but they won't admit we now get wildfires despite the huge number of houses lost rather than a few.
I wouldn't swap it for that overcrowded Sydney and suburbs about 1.5hrs East.
Will stick to mountain living and can drive 1hr and a bit West to hunt deer on public forest land.
No more seasons as they declared them a feral pest rather than a game species and now think they can be eradicated despite them failing to eradicate any other feral species.

What's worse is despite us rec hunters killing more deer than they could ever achieve, they now say we are not even part of the solution and lie about us being part of the problem.
We waste time harvesting the meat rather than shooting all the deer. We also shoot Bucks and Stags rather than hinds and does.
They are now culling heavily using helicopter gunships and also want to start using poisons like 1080 and another secret one.

It must seem stupid to you blokes and to waste such a valuable resource like venison is disgusting.
If the national govt goes along with the plan started by some farmers in one state.
We could see the end of public land hunting in the few states that still has it.
This is why they are pushing that it should be a govt professional shooting thing and not us.
Another little fact is that rec hunting provides so much money, mostly to poor rural communities, that it is one of the biggest primary industries after cattle, sheep, and timber.
The greenies want logging stopped and that may help get hunters out as they will declare forests National Parks.

Sorry for the off-topic rant but I just had to do it while talking with shooters in the USA.

[Kai]

I did a test in the garage and the Hawkesbury River Bullet Company projectiles that are made for 30-30 chamber and eject fine after I machine the base and fit gas checks.

The problem was only the ones they cast for .308 as they all had some tightness feel on lever closing and could also feel it when ejecting the unfired cartridges.
I painted a tight one with a white paint pen and did get 2 rifling type marks much further down than I would have expected.

The .308 projies are indeed a much different shape and I can see a ridge-lip on the 30-30 deigned pills.
Will try to add the photo and will just have to stick with machining the proper 30-30 projies to fit the gas checks.
Will buy another 400 box soon as I now know and just scrap the .308 ones I have fitted with checks.

Thanks for all the tips guys as it got me down to the bench and sorted.

Not sure what your resources are over there but a lead pot, some lead, and a the correct mold and all your problems are solved!

[indian joe]

Not sure what your resources are over there but a lead pot, some lead, and a the correct mold and all your problems are solved!

If a body wants to cast boolits our resources are fine we have one of the best mold makers on the planet (CBE)

[jimb16]

Two other things to check....First, are all of your cases the same length? If not, seating and crimping the bullet could be causing the case to be slightly deformed causing the hang-up. The second possibility is case neck thickness. If you are using a mix of cases, varying thicknesses of case mouth walls could also cause the problem. Use a caliper or mic to check the neck sizes after seating the bullets. You may find some significant variances in outside neck dimensions.

[Fester]

We have all the resources down under, just pay double prices and a long wait for items out of stock.
LR primers have now run out but I collected enough to shoot for a few years.
Price went from $70 AU per 1,000 to over $330 when the stocks dried up.

Casting is about all I don't do as buying the Powdercoated factory projies is much cheaper than jacketed lead pills that are now over $1 each but I mainly bought specials from the cheapest interstate shop at about $60 per hundred for medium-sized cals. I shoot lots of 140gr Hrndy ELDMs from a 6.5 Creedmoor and hunt deer with a 6.5x55 using 140gr soft points that used to be cheaper.

My 30-30 powder coated projies only cost about $75 per 400 and are consistent and good to deal with, more post as they moved from local down to the southern state about 8hrs drive.
It's just a shame they don't do a gas-check 30-30 projy and it takes time doing the 2 lathe cuts on about 100 pills to keep a box ready to load.
If I started casting, I would also have to do powder coating as I think it is the way to go.
One of the 2 owners of HRBC that I talk to is more a pistol guy but said the blokes were loading the powder-coated pills right up there.
He said they can go as fast as until the powder coating starts melting from the base of the pill.

I did the slow work up and got right up near factory 30-30 ammo speeds but found the point where they start losing accuracy and backed off a bit.
I settled on a load of about 4gr under my 150gr jacketed lead pill loads so they go OK and can now shoot to 100yd with the Skinner peep sight.
Using gas-checks on them, I load them to just under the full loads and the peep sight is close so no need to aim 6" high like when I loaded lighter plinking loads that were only good for 50yd as they started key-holing at 100.

I must have cast enough fishing sinkers for a life-time and now don't fish much lol.

[Kai]

We have all the resources down under, just pay double prices and a long wait for items out of stock.
LR primers have now run out but I collected enough to shoot for a few years.
Price went from $70 AU per 1,000 to over $330 when the stocks dried up.

Casting is about all I don't do as buying the Powdercoated factory projies is much cheaper than jacketed lead pills that are now over $1 each but I mainly bought specials from the cheapest interstate shop at about $60 per hundred for medium-sized cals. I shoot lots of 140gr Hrndy ELDMs from a 6.5 Creedmoor and hunt deer with a 6.5x55 using 140gr soft points that used to be cheaper.

My 30-30 powder coated projies only cost about $75 per 400 and are consistent and good to deal with, more post as they moved from local down to the southern state about 8hrs drive.
It's just a shame they don't do a gas-check 30-30 projy and it takes time doing the 2 lathe cuts on about 100 pills to keep a box ready to load.
If I started casting, I would also have to do powder coating as I think it is the way to go.
One of the 2 owners of HRBC that I talk to is more a pistol guy but said the blokes were loading the powder-coated pills right up there.
He said they can go as fast as until the powder coating starts melting from the base of the pill.

I did the slow work up and got right up near factory 30-30 ammo speeds but found the point where they start losing accuracy and backed off a bit.
I settled on a load of about 4gr under my 150gr jacketed lead pill loads so they go OK and can now shoot to 100yd with the Skinner peep sight.
Using gas-checks on them, I load them to just under the full loads and the peep sight is close so no need to aim 6" high like when I loaded lighter plinking loads that were only good for 50yd as they started key-holing at 100.

I must have cast enough fishing sinkers for a life-time and now don't fish much lol.

A proper cast, sized, lubed, and gc lead bullet does not need powder coating to get similar velocities.

[indian joe]

A proper cast, sized, lubed, and gc lead bullet does not need powder coating to get similar velocities.

hooray!!! yes correct
I have a Browning 348 that chrono's 2350FPS with a gascheck grease lubed boolit ---dont have problems with it.