Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing Is a tight chamber my problem here???

I've got a minor problem that I think can be fixed easily, but not sure.

I've got 3 7mm08 rifles, one of which I've had since Remington first made it a production round.

#1 is Rem 722 rebarreled in the early 80's with a 20" Douglas barrel.
#2 rifle has a 24" Krieger bbl
#3 rifle has a 24" Lilja bbl, my newest addition

All 3 were chambered by different gunsmiths.

I've been trying to work up a load that will perform well in all 3 rifles and find that #3 starts showing pressure indications way earlier that the other two as I'm working up to max.
I've experienced hard bolt opening and in one instance failure to extract the case.

What I've found is that the brass fired in #1 and #2 will chamber into each other but when trying to chamber into #3 the brass gets stuck with about 1/2" bolt travel left to go, then I have to use a cleaning rod to remove it.

I've measured the brass from all 3 and the necks are the same but the body right below the shoulder and just above the rim shows the brass from #3 to be .002-.003 smaller in diameter so I'm pretty sure this is the problem. Measured with a dial caliper so not too exact as I don't have a micrometer.

If #3 was my only rifle in this caliber it wouldn't be much of a big deal, except for reaching max loads much earlier in the progression of powder charge.

So shall I take it to a gunsmith and have it re-reamed if possible???????

ask Mule Deer he will give you the best answer

It's been my experience that one is rarely able switch brass among similarly chambered rifles. Will often go one way but not the other. So, yes. At least one unit has a tighter chamber or maybe shorter throat than the others. I neck size, but full length resizing might rectify the issue.

Else, keep one's brass dedicated to a single rifle.

Are you Full length sizing them all? The #3 rifle could have an undersized/tighter chamber and if so you could have it reamed with a standard size reamer.
All that said sounds like a lot of work for not much gain. I wouldn’t expect all 3 rifles to like the exact same load. I would probably just load for each rifle and set each up with their own specific bullet weight also.

You'll potentially end up with the same issue on another rifle unless they're all cut with the same reamer. There's tolerance in the reamer, tolerance in the lathe and tolerance in the gauges to set the standard.....sometimes they stack.

You have two options that are easy FL size all the ammo every time to you minimum chamber or segregate your ammo.

To ream one in hopes of matching the rest has a lot of potential for headaches.

He's hiding in the writers section after he got me pitched out of there for questioning the greAt gun Messiah.

If the gun shoots good and has good velocity I'd just keep the brass separate for it....that's something I would be doing anyway.

Tight chamber, shorter throat, tighter bore, etc. There are a myriad of things that could cause one to hit pressure before the others.

It's very, very rare that you're going to find and optimum load that will work for three different rifles, I wouldn't even try. All my rifles chambered for the same round get their own dedicated brass and loads worked up for that particular rifle.

I have multiple rifles chambered for a single cartridge and have 100 dedicated cases for each hunting rifle and either 200 or 300 case for each varmint rifle. The cases are dedicated to each individual rifle and never fired in a different rifle. I'm not saying that this is the best way to manage your brass, just that it is the way that I do it.

Three chambers cut with three different reamers are more likely to be slightly different than they are to be exactly the same. When you're working in 1/1,000" tolerances the differences may be small, but even a very small different may keep a cartridge from chambering.

Agree, but nobody got you pitched, you just let them steam roll ya. I question a lot of sh*t said in there and they tried the same sh*t, but I still go in to poke the bear just to get the beasties riled up.

Plainly, the chamber is tighter in that rifle but the question has to be, is that chamber tight or are the others loose? It is possible to enlarge the chamber but I would hesitate to do it as long as factory brass fits and there are no other issues (extraction etc.) GD

Grey dog - you beat me by just a few minutes….

It chambers factory ammo ok also but I forgot to mention that when I shot Hornady 140 SST in #3 it had sticky bolt on opening.

BOOM! Plus - it depends on the barrel also re: pressure signs/indications..

Always separate brass/shells between rifles - even with factory rifles and original barrels (don't ask how I know)..

Check your length of free bore.

See how far out you can seat the bullets till they touch.

Then slug the bores and check the diameters. #3 may be a tight one?

Just my thoughts.

the only way to get matching chambers is to have a smith make them with the same reamer from barrel blanks…

I can't see the section it just vanished... truth is I don't care because every writer I've ran into didn't know chit from chinola.

This ^^^

Even then, one may not always be able interchange fired brass. For example, the case head protrusion from the barrel breach of my push feed model 70 is slightly less that the protrusion from my 40X Remington, by design. This results in expansion further forward on the case web area of the 40X cases than the M70 cases when fire-formed (behind the .200 datum line). I have two barrels cut with the same .308 Win Palma reamer reamer to identical headspace and cases fired in the Remington will not chamber in the M70 . A small base die is used for both, but cannot size far enough back to make a difference.

Sometimes it's just easier to segregate cases...

I know on some rifles you can't chamber brass shot in another rifle, that's not my problem. This one is reaching signs of max pressure way earlier that the others and earlier than published max loads. That with a stuck case and hard bolt lift even on some factory ammo is what bothers me. Factory Hornady 140 SST = sticky bolt....Remington 140 corelokt no stick bolt.

As far as getting a load that works well in 3 different rifles, I've done that years ago with 3 different 270W rifles when both sons and myself were shooting the same calibers. It took some time getting there but I finally got one load to work. It wasn't perfect but all 3 rifles would group under 1", with one of my sons rifles always shooting a cloverleaf group.

Have you checked the velocities?

I have chronographed loads and the two 24" barrels velocity average almost the same. The 20" bbl obviously is somewhat slower, I'm out of town so cant go look at my notes.