Full Length Sized 308 Won't Chamber

[Suputin]

I full length resized a fellows own spent shells and they still would not fit in his rifle and they were SB dies. They worked perfect in my rifle but not his. Soured him an ever considering reloading. I never did figure out what was the problem. My rifle at the time was a Remington semi auto. I still use the brass in my Winchester also.

The problem was his chamber was shorter than yours. SB dies have FA to do with headspace. And it is headspace that is the issue when sized cases won't fit into a chamber.

 

[John Y Cannuck]

One more idea is that if you are crimping, you may be crumpling the shoulder slightly This will stop you from chambering.
Run a case through the press, smoke it, and try chambering it without a bullet.

Lots of great advice in this thread. The fact that the cases will not chamber reliably in two rifles makes me wonder about your crimp.
Case length could also be an issue. Smoke that case!

 

[SuperCub]

Hi everyone,

I'm new to reloading and have been attempting to make some 308 rounds but the brass I am decapping/resizing won't chamber in my Tikka T3 Varmint. Some (very few) of the brass will chamber in my winchester model 88 but none that have gone through the die will chamber in the Tikka. The bolt appears to go all the way forward but will not rotate and lock. I've fired factory rounds and some other reloads (from family) through it no problem so I know it must be whatever I am doing. I believe I have the Lee Pace Setter 308 dies and an RCBS shell holder in a Lee breech lock press with RCBS Case Lube 2. It was also trimmed down to about 2.008" with the Lee cutter.

I initially screwed up when sizing the brass, as I screwed in the die until it contacted the shell holder but didn't rotate it another 1/4 turn as the instructions (which I don't have because I got it used) state. But even after running the brass through again, and even trying rotating it up to 2 full turns after contact with the shell holder as a test, the brass still won't chamber. I've been measuring new shells, fired brass that's not resized and this brass and I believe the only dimension that may be responsible is the distance from the base of the case to where it starts to neck down. It is difficult to measure accurately, but standing two cases side by side it almost seems like the resized cases don't neck down as sharply as some others.

I have a Lyman headspace gauge on the way but I was hoping some of you experienced reloaders may be able to diagnose what I am doing wrong?

Thanks!

What is the history of this brass? Was it fired in another rifle?

I've found some chambers to be larger than others and even with FLR the dies won't resize the brass enough for the smaller chambers. YMMV.

 

[flyr]

Guys
He found his problem.
Post 35

 

[Potashminer]

Guys
He found his problem.
Post 35

Yeah, was back in 2016 - even I can remember back that far ago...

 

[jethunter]

Should almost be a sticky, same question regularly comes along.

 

[Maple57]

you need small base dies , then your problem will go away

This ^^^

Might need to size twice, once with regular die, then again with small base die... Cases can get stuck in the SB die if you go too far in a single step.