The brass or the rifle??

[dsly]

New Weatherby Vanguard in .223. Took to range to sight in, used factory Hornady 53 gr. loads. Great rifle!
Bought Winchester brass, loaded up some test loads with V-Max 50 gr. bullets. Went to the range, and this is where it started to get interesting.
Put three American Eagle 55 gr. through just to warm it up. Cases ejected fine, just as all the Hornady ones had.
Put in my handloads, shot the first one, opened the bolt and instead of ejecting the case, it extracted it from the chamber, but then just dropped it on top of the magazine. Thought it was me....did I do it too fast, too slow, or ????
Went through 20 handloads and not one ejected properly. Same thing....extract from chamber, then drop it on top of the magazine.
Tried a couple Hornady factory loads and they ejected fine. Tried a snapcap I had with me, and it ejected fine.

Came home and put the calipers to the brass. Measured the difference between the base, and the ejector groove. The specs for .223 seem to say this should be .046. The Hornady was .047, the American Eagle .043, and the Winchester only .041. Seems at first glance the Winchester doesn't have much of a lip for the bolt to hold onto.
BUT...forgot to mention an important point...if I chamber a handload, then eject without firing, it ejects just fine. It seems to be only the empty Winchester cases that won't eject.

Had a friend measure some of his .223 brass as a comparison. Remington was .041, American Eagle was .044, and two Winchesters were .040 and .039. But he says they all eject fine in his CZ.

So what do you think? Is this a brass problem, or do I need to have my bolt checked by the gunsmith? Would appreciate some theories here.

 

[Mount Sweetness]

It shouldn't be related to the lip because it is extracting properly

 

[finstr]

A combination of your rifle and the fact it doesnt like the brass thats .006" smaller than the Hornady stuff. Some guns are just tempermental.

 

[buffdog]

.
Extraction is o.k. so check out the ejector. It could be rounded slightly, and with the smaller diameter brass, it is not getting enough "bite" to eject the Winchester case but merely dribble it down into the magazine. In other words, not enough surface area is contacting the face of the case to kick it out, or the ejector might be rounded off too much and the smaller case is contacting the ejector near the edge and there is not enough length to fully push the case out.

A weak spring on the extractor or the extractor being a few thousands short could also allow the case head to not being pushed fully into contact with the ejector.

Me, I would simply use a different brand of brass and reload it.
.

 

[graydog]

Try reloading different brands of brass. If they do the same thing then you will know that it is something you are doing to the brass when you reload it to make it do this.

Graydog

 

[IMagius]

Had a VERY similar issue with my Savage in 22 Hornet. Turned out it was not brass or rifle related, but was an error in Case Length on the reloads. There were a little long, causing a "hard extraction" and therefore not seated fully on the bolt during extraction. Trimmed them down a bit and they worked fine.

Try trimming a few cases to the absolute Minimum Case Length (or even 0.005 under Minimum) and loading them up, maintaining the same overall loaded length, fire them and see what happens.

 

[dsly]

Just had someone point out that I have overlooked the most significant fact: with the handloads it won't eject a fired brass, but if I chamber it, don't fire, it will eject the handload just fine.
So does this have something to do with the weight? How would that affect ejection?

 

[ATOM]

Out of curiosity, have you fired factory Winchester ammo and, if so, did it eject properly?

 

[dsly]

Took the rifle to the gunsmith today. After seeing what was happening, and examining the bolt, he says there is a problem with the ejector. So now it goes off to Epps, as they are the factory repair depot. Hope they can fix this quickly before varmint season is over.
Will post results when I get it back.

 

[dsly]

Issue resolved

Took the rifle to the gunsmith today. After seeing what was happening, and examining the bolt, he says there is a problem with the ejector. So now it goes off to Epps, as they are the factory repair depot. Hope they can fix this quickly before varmint season is over.
Will post results when I get it back.

Well, after waiting a LONG time and hearing nothing, I called Epps, and they told me they didn't have my gun. A call to Gobles showed it had been shipped and signed for just a few days after I took it to Gobles. Thanks to the gunsmith at Gobles who called them, and they finally found my rifle. He was great in helping resolve this!!

So I waited another three weeks, (now almost 12 weeks from start), and got my rifle back. No explanation of what was fixed, no apology for losing my rifle for 3 weeks. Customer service gets 1/10. They get 1 because whatever they did, it fixed the problem.
It now extracts and ejects all types of brass, including my handloads.

 

[sulisa]

Weird, disjointed ending, but glad it's behaving itself now.

 

[tbhupe]

Yeah, it would be nice to know what the problem was and how they fixed it.

tbhupe

 

[adriel]

Plunger ejector, right? Did you get any gas leakage from the primer pocket on any of your handloads? With a loose primer pocket, gas can get out the back of the case, and press down on your ejector so hard that it impacts and jams the springs in there.