Home Forums Reloading Big Game Rifles failure to extract

My Model 54 Winchester in .30-06 decided not to extract today after many years of excellent service. My father bought it new in the '30s and gave it to me in 1986. Upon firing the cartridge would not extract, I went home and tried to cycle reloads that were both commercial and milsurp. After cleaning and polishing the action I learned the milsurp were not cycling and the commercial brass was. I concluded either the extractor just wore out or my batch of milsurp reloads was only neck-sized and not full resized but I don't remember which I did. Maybe I should just get a new extractor to specs if that's possible for this old gun.

Does the milsurp brass measure that much different than the commercial brass? Generally the claw extractor models grab ahold of that brass, regardless. Even if there is a small size difference. Like you said, maybe your extractor is just worn out. Have you pushed the extractor over the rim of the cartridge much? AKA: not loaded from the magazine.. This will weaken the extractor, and sometimes even break it. I'd check the extractor for any hairline cracks, that would also make it weak and not work properly.

Thanks for the reply. I always load from the magazine but the extractor is old. I'm definitely leaning toward replacing the extractor if I could find one but I don't see anyone selling them. I remember now the original extractor broke in two in '86 right after my dad gave me the gun. A local gunsmith took one off an old bolt he had and used a belt sander to make it fit just right. It worked flawlessly for me until now, probably 200 or so rounds.

Food for thought, do you have a hard carbon build up in the neck throat area? Had a Swift start giving hard extraction/fail to extract for no reason. Found hard carbon deposits in the throat, cleaned it all out with some difficulty and problem went bye bye. Believe it was causing pressure issues. 200 rounds ain’t squat on a Win extractor.

I gave it a real good cleaning, even used a bronze brush after the problem occurred. I'm going to full-length resize a bunch of cases to see if that is the fix. Neck sizing may have been a mistake.

That was my position also. Reality is with a bore scope, bronze/nylon brushes, JB paste and about 20 or so attempts I got the carbon out. It was nasty.

Log everything you do when reloading. How many times brass was fired and FL sized vs NK sized etc. Also, transfer the info to a label. Take notes as to what the particular rifle needs.

It can solve a lot of issues.