Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing 35 Whelen case failure ?

This is correct assuming the headspace was caused due to incorrect chambering, NOT from bolt lug setback. I'd suggest fireforming that cases as I detailed in an earlier post.
35WN

Yes, you can fireform the cases to fit the long chamber, just like you would for an Ackley improved gun. My method is to upset the neck by enlarging it, and use it to set the ctg against the boltface, whelen's method will do the same by hard seating the bullet into the rifling. Just drop to a midrange load and shoot away, as it creates more pressure from every reloading manual/ article I have read.

Either will work, I have always done the neck bumpup method. Just the machinist in me...lol

Allen

1)Bolt actions with excessive headspace are considered dangerous and they have no benefit to a correctly chambered gun.

2)A "custom" rifle with excessive headspace is a pig in a poke and should be returned to the smith for correction or to another smith for repair.

3)Fireforming brass to achive SAFE headspace should be reserved for wildcats and the odd case when repair is not possible or feasible.

We are all guessing at the problem, bad brass? bad die? bad H-S?. Unless a qualified person inspects this rifle you will never know. Keep us posted, Todd

A properly chambered Ackley improved barrel is set back to achieve tighter headspace than the standard cartridge. Ackley himself said this is the ONLY way to cut his improved chambers. He would use the parent cartridges go gage as a no-go and use a new sized cartridge case as a go gage so you could feel a slight crush fit when fireforming factory ammo or cases. An improved cartridge that has longer headspace than the parent case is a wildcat. Todd

Dang straight words right there.

My first .257 AI did much the same thing as this Whelan when I tried fireforming my first batch of brass.
A mild .257 Winchester factory load round nose came apart at the mid point of the case.
Taking that to mean that it must be weak brass I loaded a Remington Extended Range factory load and managed to blow the extractor and floorplate latch off of a nice M-70 Featherweight pushfeed.

If its a problem child chambering take it back before it causes you real grief.

I have contacted the smith and will keep everyone posted .

I really believe that a rifle should chamber safely as marked without modification . Improving and adjusting my dies and thus creating a non standard "loading" for this rifle is out .

It appears to be safe with factory loads or virgin brass so if I drop dead tomorrow my sons are safe .... but if they started to read my reloading notes and experiment that would not be good .

This rifle will be fixed or re-chambered if necessary .

Thank you all for the feedback ... I have my suspicions as to the culprit but hearing some of you come to the same conclusions reinforces my thoughts .

Not to argue, but to clarify my point.

#1- no idea about the ackley, I followed dad's procedure when I was 10, and thought that was what he did.

#2....

Regarding chambering, and verbage to-wit. A go-no go I believe usually allows .005" of tolerance between shallow and deep cut. My method/ suggestion was not for an out of spec chamber, and you are correct about getting it fixed by the smith..

My method of getting 20+ firings out of brass is to make a piece of brass that doesn't allow the initial stretch for a short case ( every piece of brass comes shorter than the short chamber spec, otherwise new brass would not fit all production run guns, which it does.

I have had great success, for bolt action rifles, by oversizing the neck .015", and as stated above slowly tighten a backed-off fl dieset to slowly reduce the neck until the brass closes tight in the chamber, then load and fire it. If it ever gets too tight, which I have never had happen, you can turn the FL die in and set the shoulder back for a looser fit in the chamber.

Sorry if I step on any toes. Too many reloaders think setting FL size dies hard against the shellholder is the way to resize brass.

Allen