Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters JB; PRC die dimensions and "clickers"

Can you translate that last post to English please

Back in 2008 when Hornady and Ruger introduced the 338 RCM I ordered a reamer and chambered two rifles for it. This cartridge and the 300 WSM years later became the 6.5 PRC, the subject of this thread.

At the time no one had much experience with this cartridge and didn't realize the reamer specs vs the die specs were not compatible. I had a terrible time with this chambering. The reamer was an exact duplicate to the one Hornady designed. I know because I talked to Lonnie at Hornady.

The fired Hornady brass was not extracting properly. I now know it is known as a clicker. I first used Hornady dies, then RCBS and finally had Whidden make me custom dies based on three fired cases. NONE of these dies worked properly.

Owning a lathe, I decided to make a small base die. I took the RCBS FL die and cut off the ends with a carbide bit. Polished the opening and tried over sizing the base. It helped a bit but was still not perfect.

After reading a post by Alex Wheeler, I removed the barrels from the actions and sanded and polished the rear portion of the chambers. Clickers are gone!

It is too bad that the creators of this cartridge didn't do enough testing to realize the error of its design. Perhaps they didn't consider anything but virgin brass being used, who knows.

Thanks for the post. Very interesting that these chamberings/cartridges are not designed with the handloader in mind.

When Mule Deer mentioned how few shooters hand load, I was really surprised! I think he said 90% do not?

I guess there is the answer.

Interesting I had two 338RCMs chambered around the time the round was released. Early enough I had to buy factory ammo as I couldn't find brass for the inital load development. I have no idea what reamer the smith used, but they worked fine. I do have a set of Hornady dies for the the 338 RCM, but mostly use a lee collet and a custom redding body die. I have some brass with more than 8 loads on it.

Now 300WSM...I had some issues there.

If you look at the SAMMI dimensions for chambers and the cases, that's pretty obvious....note the dimensional reference for the brass. Of course, many factory chambers are bigger than the SAMMI minimum so they might get around it. Same as any individual chamber/brass/die combo.

When it comes to small base dies....anyone thinking they can size the solid case head area significantly smaller needs to change the brand of cigarettes they're smokin'. You're better off chucking the cases up and taking a couple thou off the back end of the cases...which I've done more than a couple times on some wildcat chamberings.

Opening the back of a chamber up is simple, effective and permanent. It will cost less than trying a bunch of dies that dont work. If your barrel is already chambered, it's no big deal to have done. If you're getting a new one chambered, the 'fix' is even easier.

Good shootin' -Al

Kiff is notorious for "minimum" specs......

My 1st experience with clickers, is what Al referred to earlier. My 30x47 reamer, for Hunter BR, worked fine with brass made from 300 Savage cases, but when using the new Lapua 308 brass, the clickers showed up. With 20 pieces of brass, I could shoot a full day, 100 yard in the AM, 200 in the PM, somewhere between 70-100 shots in a days match, and the clickers would appear some time in the afternoon.

I had a FL 308 die, that would squeeze the base, and my brass came back to life, till the afternoon of the next match. Basically a band aide.....

Best cure was to take a wooden dowel, cut a slot in it for a piece of emery paper, chuck it in a drill, and polish out the back end of the chamber. A little at a time, checking with a fired piece of brass, until the click went away. I've done it with the barrel on the gun, and off. Easier when on the gun to check progress, just spray the chamber out with Brakleen between polishing.

I had one reamer that Kiff made so tight, it would not chamber a new unfired piece of brass. I had to really polish that one out. I had the reamer reground, and was still too tight on new brass. I had a new reamer built, guess what, still too damn tight. So a call to JGS cured my troubles.....

When the PRC came out, I ordered a reamer from JGS, and never had any problems with clickers with the two barrels that were chambered.

I also had a reamer made for the 6 PRC from JGS, and no issues with two barrels there either. However, I don't recall the number of firings on any of the brass used in those barrels.

Clickers are real........

Amen, buddy.

When we did our 30 WareWolf (basically a 308W on Lapua brass shortened .165), I pushed the shoulder back to where we wanted it, Stan sent a few pieces to Dave with the instructions to make the reamer not less than .003 under the shoulder dimension and .004 under the back end .200 ahead of the extractor groove. At that time, Dave personally inspected all the reamers before they went out. He and Stan had a good relationship and the stuff we got was spot on every time. But that was a different time. For dies, I used a 308W Redding Body die, shortened it .165 at the back end and converted them to take a bushing. No clickers ever and 50 pcs of brass lasted the entire life of a barrel (4,000-ish rounds) at pressures well in excess of 65,000. Pretty normal stuff for the BR and Hunter Benchrest shooters like yourself.

Turn the page (channeling a little Bob Seger) and all of a sudden "clickers" are something new to this generation of shooters?! Good Gawd Margaret...get out the wooden dowel and sand paper...it's a miracle fix!!!! As you've explained!

We've only been dealing with this for a few decades, right? It's amazing that people don't do basic homework when the map has been well drawn and documented.

Good stuff from you as per always.

Good shootin' -Al

I am not an expert on the 6.5 PRC but I do listen and observe quite a few who have adopted it as the ultimate mountain rifle. They all expect it to deliver velocities that are unlikely to be reached with a case of that capacity.

In a 24” barrel I think it will be pretty difficult to exceed 2950 without running excessively high pressures.

At such pressures cases are not suited for the high number of loadings that I hear talk of. Annealing restores softness but there isn’t a way to restore elasticity.

There is clearly a trend towards acceptance of higher and higher pressures. This might be ok in a target type rifle but is a bad idea in a hunting rifle.

Solution, get a bigger engine (ie more case capacity).

Amen!

Got a little time in the other day with a Havak Element in 6.5PRC.

The chamber dimensions were pretty well thought out. With Lapua cases loaded multiple times, there was no hint of a bolt click even with a good dose of N565 and bullets seated from a hard jam to .060 off.

Good shootin' -Al