Interesting info for reloading newbs...

cosmic

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Heres a snippet from another thread about an experienced reloader doing a nasty on a Tikka rifle.


I had loaded these rounds years ago for an older t3 I had. In the interest of accuracy I had loaded to an oal of just .010 off the lands. Advice from an experienced gunsmith. When I was at the range yesterday we were having a misfire with every second round of 223 norinco (not with the M4) so we switched to those 4 year old hand loads. No misfires and good accuracy. Just a ##### getting the bolt closed. Obviously the lands were closer. I think when closeing the bolt (with considerable effort) I must have been driving the projectile back into the case. Thus raising the pressure. I shoot IPSC and do a lot of reloading. I also reload with a friend every time and we always watch each other for errors. We also do this with no distractions. Jay can back this up. I probably have loaded 100,000 rounds by now. I just don't see me overloading this round. This said I do take ownership of this and do feel terrible about it happening to my wife. Thanks for the comments about not letting family shoot your reloads. That makes me feel even worse. The main focus of this thread was to seek a gunsmith in Edmonton who does Tikka's. As for the back cover someone asked. It's ok. It did get launched into my wife's face though.
 
I`m confused, where you having trouble closing the bolt on your old reloads or the Norinco, and where you using the Tikka that you perviously loaded for. If you had the same Tikka and shot it with the reloads made earlier and had no problems why would the change sitting in the box?
 
I realize this is someone elses post but what did they do to the Tikka? and what does he feel terrible about? Is part of the post missing
 
Heres some more - you can read about it in the gunsmithing forum - Tikka kaboom...


So got my new T3 stainless lite out today and after about 20 rounds my wife had an event. She is alright just looks like so one smashed her in the face. The riffle didn't do so good. I had to use a hamer to get the bolt out. Extractor is destroyed. Chamber, barrel, receiver look ok. Burrs on bolt lugs. I am not a computer guy so please don,t ask for pics. I am looking for a gunsmith in Edmonton who works on tikkas to tell me if its scrap, or of it can be fixed. Weird thing is when I was disassembling I found 2 spent primers? Wonder if a loose one could have stopped the bolt from fully closing causing an out of battery fire?
 
That's scary.

The fellow that has tutored me, has been insistent that I don't need a powder cop or a lock out die.

With 100k rounds loaded, that is likely more experience than I will ever have.

So after reading this, I am very drawn to the powder cop or lock out die.

I do understand that is not the issue here.

But if it can avert a problem or an event, then I'm doing it.
 
Sounds a bit confused for my understanding. If the bolt was hard to close, it could also be from not enough resizing. Then, at first, why one would fire a round so hard to chamber without at least looking at what's wrong? - especially an "experienced" reloader?
Now, if the bullet was pushed back into the case, it can't be that much as he claims he seated them .004" from the lands...
At the end, the OP doesn't seem to look at his cases after he fires them; how can one end up finding two spent primers inside the action without seing that a case was missing one??

I think we miss some infos or there are partial truth in his statements...
 
He claims his newer Tikka caused his (old Tikka-based) reloads to jam in the rifling, causing the over pressure incident. Looking at his load data, he was below minimum load! The question begs - did he remember that his old reloads were relatively tight to the lands?
The point I'm trying to make is that you are much closer to the "edge" when you start loading close to the lands.. for rookies it may not be a bad idea to back off to say 30 thou...
 
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