Thank you all for the good advice. I did have my sizing die set up wrong for sure. I didn't read the RCBS directions because I've done it so many times but it's been a few years since I set up a set of dies for a new cartridge.
As for as my gunsmith, I know what he will say, 'I told you not to use cheap brass and you need to get a set of match grade dies" because I've heard him say that before. He's a serious accuracy freak. I went to the range this morning and fired 16 rounds (got one 3 shot 1/8" group at 100 yds, so no problem there). I did use Lapua brass and none of them failed to chamber.
Since the guy who built this rifle is here in town, if it ever happens with Lapua brass I'll head straight to his shop and get him to show me what's wrong.
Thank you all again.
And sometimes it doesn’t matter if you are setting up the die correctly, if there’s a problem in the rifle. Good to hear you have yours sorted.
A story of my own, I once had a fine gunsmith do the metal work on a rifle and sent it out for stock work and bluing. Somewhere along the way the barrel got taken off and not screwed in the right distance. I tried to chamber rounds and no joy. I tried pretty much everything I could think of die wise to form the cases smaller. Finally I called the metalwork gunsmith and sent the rifle back. Probably took him 15 minutes to fix it because the index marks he had made weren’t lined up.
And I would prefer if all FL dies were ‘screw in until firm contact with shellholder’ was the required setup!
