Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Hey Mule Deer: Tight necked .270 wsm

I just rebarrelled a Savage with a used .270wsm bbl. Took it out shooting the first time and got severe pressure signs (hard bolt lift, cratered primers, ejector marks) at 2 grains above minimum loads, 4 grains below max. 129gr Lrx and Rl 17 just for info.

I googled pressure signs with min loads or something similar and found a thread here where a guy had a similar issue and you suggested he might have a tight chamber in the neck area, and to try dropping a bullet into a fired case. I tried that, and the bullet will only go into the case with extreme force -- so that looks like the problem. So what's the solution? Inside neck reaming, outside neck turning, recut chamber, or just run extremely light loads? I wasn't using my chrony so I don't know velocities on those loads. I do have some factory I might go shoot later and see what rhe results are, but haven't gotten around to it yet.

Thanks John

All of the four solutions you suggest would work, but neck reaming or turning might be the easiest and least expensive.

You might measure the outside diameter of the necks with a bullet seated, and compare it to the standard specifications. If larger, then the brass is probably the problem.

I generally prefer outside-turning of necks, but inside reaming can work well too.

Ok great, thanks. Guess I'll have to get a neck turning setup.

Shot a nice whitetail last week, about 400 yards away from the borderline with your state. He went down about 200 yards away from being an international incident, I'd like to get this rifle running right to avoid that risk in the future.

What would you do if that happened?

Just thought of something:

You might try trimming a little off the mouth of fired cases, and see if bullets will enter the neck. It might be a far simpler problem, a slightly short chamber, where the neck gets crimped around the bullet during chambering.

There were at least two trucks sitting on the border, I'd assume watching this buck -- so I'd yell at those dudes, see if they'd drag him to the line for me. If not... well those are the risks you run.

Hey, good call on that last point John -- trimmed one down by .040, bullet enters no problem. If you look closely at the fired case you can actually see what looks like a crimp from the short neck of the chamber.

All the cases were within spec but on the long side, so I'll trim them back till the bullet enters and then probably go .010 back from there as my safe trim length.

Thanks again, you been out bird hunting much this year? I'm planning a quick pheasant hunt down to Central Mt next week.

Aha! I should have thought about trimming the necks in the first place. Have run into a short-necked chamber more than once over the years....

Yeah, I bird hunt a lot, especially locally. The pheasant hatch has been OK around here this year, but Huns (also a favorite) have been scarce.