One of our ceremonial 1903's jammed
on Memorial Day. Could not open the bolt
on a fired blank. I went thru 16 pages and 3
searches of this forum to find a cause/solution
to no avail. I finally decided to use my plastic
HAMMER and by gently tapping got the bolt
open and had to tap a dowel down the bore
to get the casing out. Turns out the blank cartridge
was LC69 in its factory loading. The neck of the
brass appears tightly expanded and shows some
'abrasion' from being extracted. I'm going to use
that cartridge with some fine grit and spin it in the
chamber to see if that will smooth the neck of
the chamber a little.
At this point I will mention that I have been
reloading our blanks for several years because
of many malfunctions of surplus blanks. This was
not one of them. I generally empty the powder from
surplus blanks, punch out the primers, remove the
crimp and start over. Our members have been
quite satisfied with the results.
I would appreciate any comments from cast booliteers
that would help my efforts.