303B Headspace, Sizing

[bigedp51]

No idea what the .000 case came out of. I bought a mixed bunch of brass off a guy. It contains a variety of case types and headspace lengths.

You are dealing with brass spring back after resizing, and you have cases fired in many different chambers. The case shoulders will spring back after resizing and mixed once fired cases in different chambers will have mixed head space or shoulder locations after resizing. On top of this mixed brass shoulder location or headspace will vary by brands of cases.

Your problem is caused by mixed brass resizing and shoulder spring back on your cases.

 

[I Dont Care About You]

You are speaking to British Commonwealth military specifications, just shake your head and move on, ba ha ha.

This seems to be the reality we are dealing with.

It was my impression that WWI and previous military designers did not care one bit about reloading those cases - I think their concern was to chamber and fire - once - some really sub-standard made stuff - they apparently were stuck with bazillions of those rounds, so the solution was to enlarge the rifle chambers enough to allow use of the crap stuff they had to use, without the case bursting or splitting - on its one and only "first firing" - most of the time. It is us, more than 100 years later, that have to figure out the "work around" to reload brass from those chambers

My rifle is a 1954 built Mk2. One would think by the time we got to the last production of these rifles that chamber size with respect to ammo spec would have been sorted and we wouldn't be dropping ammo of one shape into a chamber of another shape?

 

[I Dont Care About You]

You are dealing with brass spring back after resizing, and you have cases fired in many different chambers.

Other than to set up my FL sizing die I haven't sized any cases yet. I have a bunch of different case types fired in a bunch of different rifles. Once I get all the cases annealed then I will run them through the FL size die to put the shoulder where it needs to be for my chamber.

Your problem is caused by mixed brass resizing and shoulder spring back on your cases.

I have one of these tools and my problem is not cause by sizing because I haven't sized any cases yet.

 

[Snider shooter]

I have had 43 LE come through my hands from a Martini,1’s, 4’s 5’s and P-14 and haven’t found two chambers the same yet. Those rifles are from 1884 to 1952. Can’t do anything about so I have just learned to deal with it.

 

[Hitzy]

Military rifles need to go bang, which means there needs to be room for dirt, water, crap etc between the chamber and the brass.
Even K31's which are built to tight tolerances show visual changes in pre and post firing. Swiss military unfired ammo on left, right is neck sized fire formed brass. Cases blow out quite a bit, taper blows out, shoulder squares up..

 

[I Dont Care About You]

I had a TRW M14 and an L1A1 and they don't produce cases wildly different from the loaded ammo. The millions of Garands out there also don't change the shape of their fired brass from the unfired ammunition. While the M14 didn't serve for long, the Garand and FAL did serve for decades and in a variety of different environments. They didn't seem to need overly loosey gooey chambers to run reliably.

 

[45ACPKING]

It seems to me that the military .303british round was around and in service long before the m14, L1a1, garand, fal...... so how can any comparisons be made?
Firearms were evolving fast through the WW1 and WW2 years and so was ammunition.
The 303B was replaced by 30-06 and 7.62x51 for a reason.
Now all the information I have gleaned in books, magazines and forums on the lee enfield rifles and in pariticular, reloading for them...... the shoulder means nothing and "headspace" is measure off the rim. Trying to go down a rabbit hole to figure out why a non fired case looks so drastically different than a fired one at the shoulder seems kind of pointless.
If the cases are fire formed in your rifle using the o-ring at the base as shown some posts back, that case is what you set your dies up to repeat. Seems pretty straight forward as there is no consistancy when comparing shoulder dimensions across a spectrum of these rifles.
I'm far from an expert.... a novice in fact, but the above is my take on it.

 

[hogie]

I had a TRW M14 and an L1A1 and they don't produce cases wildly different from the loaded ammo. The millions of Garands out there also don't change the shape of their fired brass from the unfired ammunition. While the M14 didn't serve for long, the Garand and FAL did serve for decades and in a variety of different environments. They didn't seem to need overly loosey gooey chambers to run reliably.

Two different cartridges, rimmed like 303 headspace off the rim, 308, 3006 off the shoulders. Headspace off shoulders need to have better tolerance.

Lee Enfield was produced in the millions, WW1 production had some manufactures using same serial number twice in a year model. They had generous chambers for a reason. Because the headspace was off the rim they didn't have to be as worried about the chamber. Add in bad batches of ammo that could be out of spec as well. Bad ammo with Ross in spec chambers created an unreliable combination. They expanded the Ross chambers after finding this out.

As pointed out on the thread use the o ring to form to chamber, neck size after to extend brass life. These rifles were never intended to used for reloading, just battle, which they did well.

 

[Fox]

I had a TRW M14 and an L1A1 and they don't produce cases wildly different from the loaded ammo. The millions of Garands out there also don't change the shape of their fired brass from the unfired ammunition. While the M14 didn't serve for long, the Garand and FAL did serve for decades and in a variety of different environments. They didn't seem to need overly loosey gooey chambers to run reliably.

You are speaking way too much in the modern sense. The 303 British case was designed in 1889, at a time when smokeless powder was in its infancy, heck, the first smokeless in the 303 British was Cordite, which is artillery powder.

To know why they had oversized chambers you have to look at the history of the Anglo-Zulu war, where the 577/450 cartridge of the Martini Henry was made of a copper foil rather than brass and was easily dented. These cases stuck in the rifles, to the point there guys were using knives and bayonets to try to pry them out while being killed by Zulu spears.

At no point in the history of the british military did then care at all about some guy reloading 100 years later, all they cared about was that the gun went bang when the guy pulled the trigger.

This is the same reason why the original M16 rifles were thrown into the jungle of Vietnam when they could get an M14, the gun and ammo needed to be sloppy to work under the conditions.

I do not suspect that the M14 and L1A1 would have worked out as well in the trenches of WWI as the No 1 Mk III Lee Enfield, the Ross rifle did not.

As a Lee Enfield shooter I want you to grab some ammo and head out to the range, enjoy your rifle for what it is and for as long as you can. They are beautiful guns.

One thing your posts are doing is reminding me that it has been a while since I pulled the trigger on my Enfields, they will be making the trip to the range with me on my next trip, thank you

 

[Hitzy]

I had a TRW M14 and an L1A1 and they don't produce cases wildly different from the loaded ammo. The millions of Garands out there also don't change the shape of their fired brass from the unfired ammunition. While the M14 didn't serve for long, the Garand and FAL did serve for decades and in a variety of different environments. They didn't seem to need overly loosey gooey chambers to run reliably.

Try running some once fired IVI from MG's through a sizing die and you will get an idea how much those cases expand.