That's a damn dangerous situation....I saw what can happen first hand.

A guy two benches down from me was working with his 30-06 Model 70 hunting gun. He mentioned to me that he was having trouble closing the bolt on his reloads and asked if I'd take a look at it. I watched as he chambered a round and it looked like it was pretty snug when he closed the bolt. He started to open the bolt and BAM...it went off!

He was damn lucky the bolt had j-u-s-t started to rotate when it went off. If the lugs had cleared the lug abutments in the receiver, he would have caught the bolt right between the eyes.

After everything settled down, I took a look at his reloads. All of the primers were far enough above the case head that you easily catch them with your fingernail. With my dial caliper, I measured them at about .010 above the case head....a little hard to do but that was in the ball park. He said they had gone in fine, using the priming tool on his Rock Chucker.

I took a couple loaded rounds over my bench, pulled the bullets, dumped the powder and pushed the live primers out. I had some Federal 210's in my range box and pressed those in with my hand primer tool...felt fine. But they were still way above the case head. Pushed the Federals out and used my carbide large primer uniformer on the primer pockets until it quit cutting. In with the Federals again and now they were about .004 below the case head.

He threw all the brass, bought new Winchester 30-06 brass and went happily forward.

I suggest you uniform the pockets to the correct depth before firing another round. Be careful!


Forbidden Zoner