OAL for a Shadow...

[aridan]

If NONE of your newly made ammo falls out freely, this may be another issue altogether, like the amount of crimp or even a sizing issue. However, if you can turn the barrel with the round in it upside-down, and tap the hand holding the barrel firmly against your other hand, and the round falls out, you should be OK. I had about 10% of my brass acting this way, so I made a box of all those that would 'stick', and fired them slowly one by one. I haven't had a single FTF/FTE so I calmed down at that point, and left it at that OAL.

Try to measure OAL for 40-50 rounds & see how much of a variance you're getting. CeeZer's OAL = 1.085" in HIS CZ is for HIS RN bullet, mine is 1.090 +/- 0.005 for my Shadow AND 124gr AIM RN - but it is 1.095" for Canadian BDX RN. You can use these numbers as a rough guide only - yours WILL be different.

I would also do the barrel test for individual steps, i.e.:
1. Can you drop in/out a sized case freely? If not you may need to size further down.
2. If you seat and crimp in separate steps, do you feel a difference between chambering a seated-only round and a crimped one?

FWIW, I'm using Lee FCD in a separate step, following the advise I was given. Then again, some people think that FCD is for those who don't know how to bell & then seat/crimp properly. I readily admit my lack of expertise - all I know is that FCD gives me this extra assurance.

 

[CeeZer]

Yes, the OAL I mentioned is for MY gun and for a PARTICULAR bullet, another one I like is with diff bullet and OAL 1.105".
CZs are known to come with tight chambers and rifling of the barrel to start earlier than on other guns, thus they are more sensitive to ammo.
Is your brass clean and shiny (somewhat polished)? If brass is not clean or smooth you may experience that too.
To improve feeding and extraction I polished chamber of my Shadow. I noticed improvement right away. Theoretically, both - chamber and case of the ammo need to mate and if they are smooth you won't have issues. Or, if chamber is very so slightly larger.

 

[sigtactical]

reasons as why your COAL is variable can have something to see with bullits used. otherwise make sure the seating die is adjusted/tightened with all station full,and the final tightening must be done with the shell plate up, a bullit inserted in the die.

crimping may shorten the COAL a little,but all rounds should show the same measurement.

my shadow eat anything from 1.095 to 1.120,you should not have any feeding gremlins with a little variation of your COAL.

 

[Viper26]

I shoot the AIM 124's and 147's. COL of 1.100 and never a problem. I do however get some varriation just like the OP. 4 or 5 thou (+) or (-) hasn't made any difference in the feeding or function so I don't worry about it. It is an interesting problem though. As some have already noted there are often "fit" issues between the bullet profile and the die seating stem. What I've found is that the round nose seating stem provided with my Dillon dies contacts the ogive of the 124's before the bullet nose bottoms out. Slight varriations in the ogive would account for the differences in COL. The 147's are less blunt in their profile and the seating stem hits them on the nose, not the ogive. I get less varriation with the 147's, and the small differences I do get can be attributed to the play in the press.

 

[aridan]

Slight varriations in the ogive would account for the differences in COL. The 147's are less blunt in their profile and the seating stem hits them on the nose, not the ogive. I get less varriation with the 147's, and the small differences I do get can be attributed to the play in the press.

Took me a while to realize that. I now get less variation with RN using a flat seating stem. I get even less variation with .40S&W which is SWC-like. Typical variation is +/- 0.002 on my LnL, but I do get an occasional reading that's out by +/- 0.005.

FWIW I couldn't load 124gr AIM RN reliably with average OAL greater than 1.090. Like you said, the ogive has variations of its own. I had some ammo at OAL = 1.098 that would still chamber fine, only to be followed by others at 1.093 that would fail the barrel test, and would require gentle persuasion to leave the barrel. Still, these would fire OK without FTFs, I just didn't want to take chances.

My Jericho 941 is way less sensitive than the Shadow, it eats everything that the Shadow spits out. Some say it is less accurate because the Shadow has a tighter barrel but I found its performance to be at par.

 

[stevebc]

Yes, the OAL I mentioned is for MY gun and for a PARTICULAR bullet, another one I like is with diff bullet and OAL 1.105".
CZs are known to come with tight chambers and rifling of the barrel to start earlier than on other guns, thus they are more sensitive to ammo.
Is your brass clean and shiny (somewhat polished)? If brass is not clean or smooth you may experience that too.
To improve feeding and extraction I polished chamber of my Shadow. I noticed improvement right away. Theoretically, both - chamber and case of the ammo need to mate and if they are smooth you won't have issues. Or, if chamber is very so slightly larger.

My brass is once fired (from my Shadow) Win brass, either the Ranger 147gr or white box 115gr, so while it's not tumbled shiny, it's still in decent shape. However, polishing the chamber might well address my issues; how exactly did you polish it?

 

[stevebc]

Updated: they stick at 1.092, drop free below that. I've set the seater to give me 1.087, and I'm using 3.5gr W231 as a starting load.

 

[stevebc]

Last night I made up 25 rds of the above recipe, tested each one in the barrel. Today they all fed properly, went bang, extracted.
Next step, try out my powder dump. I've never used one of these before, so it'll be interesting to see how accurate they are. Good thing I'm patient, I only have a single stage press...

 

[CeeZer]

As for polishing chamber, I used soft felt wheel with dremmel and a very tiny bit of very fine polishing compound. Don't overdo it, set speed to medium too. But you still have to be very careful.

Powder drop - weigh several consecutive individual drops when adjusting; then what I do is I weigh say 5 charges and then divide by 5 to see what charge actually is. Say one charge weighs in as 4.0gr while 5 charges weigh in as 20.8gr, so I know one charge isn't really 4.0gr, it's a little more. Then I adjust... repeat... and then when it's dead on, I start loading and check charge every 100 rds.

 

[stevebc]

As for polishing chamber, I used soft felt wheel with dremmel and a very tiny bit of very fine polishing compound. Don't overdo it, set speed to medium too. But you still have to be very careful.

Powder drop - weigh several consecutive individual drops when adjusting; then what I do is I weigh say 5 charges and then divide by 5 to see what charge actually is. Say one charge weighs in as 4.0gr while 5 charges weigh in as 20.8gr, so I know one charge isn't really 4.0gr, it's a little more. Then I adjust... repeat... and then when it's dead on, I start loading and check charge every 100 rds.

Good to know about polishing the chamber, but now that I've solved the issue of sticking, I'll probably leave it alone. But I've subscribed to the thread so I can find it again if need be.
I'll try your averaging idea and get it down to where I want it, but I still have to do some sort of ladder test to figure out what charge it likes best. Lacking a Ransom Rest, I'll just try it off sandbags and see what turns up.
A 100 rounds? I thought they had to be checked more often than that.

Anyway, I appreciate the feedback- in many ways, this has been more challenging to me than loading for rifle, so all help is gratefully accepted.