well, found the problem with my barrel.
it is a chamber issue - the mouth of the case is jamming into the leade when a round is chambered. case growth at the shoulder was 6-7 thou, so it looks to me like Odin didn't ream the neck deep enough. whatever it was, something was messed up during chambering.
I chambered a prepped piece of virgin brass (trimmed to 1.510" (minimum)), to see if anything showed up on the brass, and the case mouth came out quite rough. like a tiny hole saw.
looking closely at the 1F Starline brass (all initially trimmed to minimum) that I finally got around to tumbling, and the case mouths on the fired brass look like they've been roll crimped. the case mouth measures ~6 thou smaller diameter than the middle of the neck. it's visible to the naked eye if you look really close, and is too narrow for a bullet to drop through. no wonder everything was sticky.
I took the barrel and bolt into Calgary Shooting Centre yesterday, who sold them to me last fall, and the guy I dealt with had no interest in helping me. first he blamed the LPC receiver for magically affecting headspace on an AR barrel (because the SLR it was on first miraculously never stuck a case in the chamber). he then told me that it was pointless to send the barrel to Odin because AR parts were being confiscated at the border. finally, after he couldn't find the person who dealt with their Odin account, instead of taking my name/# for that person to call me, he told my best bet was to email Odin myself to see if they would help.
bear in mind, Odin offers lifetime replacement warranty for any defective parts, so that's seriously disappointing service.
every time I see one of these it takes a small part of my soul away 
