can someone measure there fired brass for me, diameter wise right where the chamber stops. I am getting a very pronounced ring, or expansion, seems like a large diameter chamber or smaller than usual brass in the rear. mine measure .298 at the very rear of the brass that is still in the chamber. unfired measure .293-.294. this is factory ammo. the ring looks wrong
I have the Savage 25 Lightweight Varminter; I have had it for almost a year now, and have put somewhere between 6-700 rounds down the barrel. About half were factory, the others handloads. I know the rifle, and cartridge, very well by now and like them both a lot. I don't have feeding problems at all, but do experience the occasional ejection failure. Never, ever a failure to extract from the chamber. I am becoming inclined to believe that the occasional ejection problems are related to the lots of brass. There have been many well documented issues with various lots of Hornady brass, and I have experienced all of these first hand. I haven't been systematic about tracking lots to ejection failures, but anecdotally I seem to experience this issue in episodes, and usually close together. Then I can go through several hundred rounds without experiencing it. I am suspecting that the failures I experience occasionally are from cases that originated with the same lot.
FYI, I have figured out that the year of manufacture of the Hornady factory ammo can be determined by the second and third digit of the lot number. They all start with a "3" followed by 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, etc. The newer manufactured stuff has been completely problem free. The rings that you are experiencing indicate a large chamber. In my Savage I get virtually no visible ring upon first firing of factory stuff. I have fired a lot of them.
To your original question, sounds like you've already made up your mind. And the CZ's are nice guns to be sure, but the Savage 25 gets a bad rap (and attributable to early bugs that needed working out from what I can tell), but mine has been perfect and the accuracy (especially with the factory stuff), is truly amazing. I like my model 25 a lot. There's no mistaking it's a Savage; the lines of the action are not particularly aesthetically pleasing, but I can live with that. It's a great gun. I also do not like the look of the box mag on the 527, but I could also live with that if the gun shot well otherwise.
I like the looks of the Ruger 77 a lot, but their triggers suck in general, and accuracy can be spotty, so for me that one wouldn't be an option for a cartridge with the accuracy potential of the .17 Hornet.
