Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Custom Rifles & Wildcats 280 A.I. and Nosler Brass

I just had Mickey Coleman make me a 280 A.I. rifle. In anticipation of receiving my barreled action I purchased two boxes of Nosler 280 A.I. brass and one box of finished ammo (140 gr. accubond).
To my surprise the brass nor the ammo when chambered does not allow me to close the bolt. I sent the barrelled action back to Mickey and he said it is dead on to SAAMI specs. Which says Nosler brass and finished ammo are not to SAAMI specs. Anyone else experieance this problem?

only problem i have had was with my redding bump die i think they said saami specs are a little different than what the ackley dimensions where before it became an official saami cartridge mine was chambered by Kampfeld and worked fine.
after hearing about this problem i tried to close the bolt on an empty piece of brass with black electrical tape on the back of the case and it would not close so i am thinking mine is good to go

gene

It's possible that Mickey might still have the 'old' .280AI tooling and gauges.. A couple years ago, Nosler's design was the final one accepted by SAAMI but it's of a different shoulder than the older one.. Therefore, anyone doing .280AI chamberings must have a new reamer and different set of gauges..

I sold my old set and obtained the new tools from Mansons earlier this year.

You know somewhere I read, maybe here, that there was a slight discrepancy over what SAAMI ended with and Nosler. The number of .015 comes up as the number.
Maybe others here will point to the issue at hand.

The joy of wildcats.

I've had my hands on a box of factory WW 300 Savage cartridges, several of which would not chamber in either of two factory rifles chambered in 300.

Can you chamber brass that has been FL resized?

Only thing I can say my gunsmith used a Manson reamer for my 280AI and I can chamber Nolser 280AI brass.

+1 to what Redneck said, "must have"

make sure your dies are the proper spec, too...

This is what the gunsmith just e-mailed me "The reamer and gauges we have are the ones that work with Remington brass and we've chambered at least fifty barrels with this combination. Nosler changed their brass according to Dave Kiff. Decide which brass you want to use and we'll make it work."
I don't know what way to go. HELP

If there's only a few thousandths difference a Redding body die might be a quick cure for the brass/ammo you have now.

tried F/L die N/G

Correct me if I'm wrong, but can there be more than "ONE" SAAMI Spec???

I'd want what was the official SAAMI spec b/c if not, going into the future, you'll be a few thousandths off everything you might need.

Sell the Nosler brass and fire form from regular 280 brass. I think that would be the best way to go since the chamber seems to be custom.

I did 100 Remington pieces that way and they work great. Your greatest problem will be bumping the shoulder back if your F/L dies do not accomplish that now.

What happens when you try to chamber standard .280 Rem ammo?

Did you adjust the FL sizing die to 1/4 turn down/tighter PAST snugly contacting the shellholder? That has made all the difference for me in many FL sizing scenarios. Even the biggest, baddest reloading presses stretch enough under that much pressure to allow for a 1/4 turn down on FL sizing dies. If you did not, I would sure give that a tryu before getting too excited. Good luck!

From what I have read the Nosler SAAMI head space is .014 shorter than the P.O. Ackley so you should be getting excess head space if you used an P.O. Ackley chamber with Nosler brass.

I just did a little looking and it seems the newer SAAMI spec is shorter than the older 280AI chamber, and new Nosler brass would have excessive headspace in a "traditional" chamber.

This is backwards from what's going on here. I beez confused.

If I was going to use Nosler brass and some of their custom ammo I would make up a dummy round using Nosler brass and overnite it to Mickey.

Though quite aggravating, it's probably good the bolt would not close as opposed to closing with some tension. Then you would have likely gone ahead with loading development & possibly run the pressures up sky high. You would have really been scratching your head.

It happened to me once with a 280 Improved chambering. When the action was closed on the cases with the shoulder in the wrong place, there was tension and the lower shoulder pinched the base of the bullet. With 58 gr Imr 4831 the primer disintegrated and the case had to be forcibly extracted.

That event was the turning point for me giving up on wildcats and going with standard chamberings. Of course, you thought you were doing just that.