Thread: 7mm-08 reloads extraction issue - thoughts please

Originally Posted by caberslash

If you are wondering why the cartridges chamber OK but difficult to extract... physics textbook and the bit about Archimedes and levers/leverage.

After the case has fired, you don't always get sufficient brass springback if the fit was tight to begin with.

Well I did abandon physics in Form 6 as neither my head nor my math was up to it, but happy to take you word for it. The dealer agrees with you and in a nutshell offered the the 3 lug bolt design found on the Ruger, and other rifles, is inclined to produce this extraction issue when, like you say, brass is resized enough to chamber but not sufficiently at the last few mm of the base which expands to cause a bind. A 2 lug like a Mauser design has a lot more extraction power, apparently. So the fix according to the dealer is to look for issues like the press is not sufficiently anchored to prevent "bounce" and incomplete FL sizing, operator error, slightly overspec dies. He didn't say but probably case brass variations also. Anyway, he is lending me a set of used Hornady dies to try something different. Not having a small base die. After that it will be sending some off to @sneeze to run thru his. We are marking the cases that won't extraction until they cool.

Interesting problem. Thanks for all the input. Will update.

Greetings @Jhon and all,
A couple of observations that may not have been covered. First the 129 grain Hornady projectile is noted as being soft and needs a little more powder to develop the same velocity. From your OP I gather these gave no problems. From my measurements the 139 grain SST is around 2mm longer so may develop a little more pressure due to the reduced case volume. Hodgdon lists 42.2 grains as max for the 140 grain A Frame and Nosler lists 42 grains for their generic 140 grain data. This leads me to believe that 42 grains may be a more sensible max for the SST projectiles. The likely lack of primary extraction has been well discussed and may be inherent with the rifle. This leaves the cases. Each time a case is sized the worked section of the brass becomes a little harder. The same thing happens when it is fired. This may explain the return of sporadic problems with case sticking.
Hope this helps. GPM.

Pretty interesting thread.

I would be considering taking a press to the range, using one case and measuring it at 5 or 6 points both before firing, after firing and after resizing and reloading it until it sticks.

Maybe using one that's stuck before as a start point? Just see if there is a point in dimensions where you start having the issue, and then you can compare the chamber and case specs from SAAMI and see if you can identify a discrepancy.

Originally Posted by Jhon

Well I did abandon physics in Form 6 as neither my head nor my math was up to it, but happy to take you word for it. The dealer agrees with you and in a nutshell offered the the 3 lug bolt design found on the Ruger, and other rifles, is inclined to produce this extraction issue when, like you say, brass is resized enough to chamber but not sufficiently at the last few mm of the base which expands to cause a bind. A 2 lug like a Mauser design has a lot more extraction power, apparently. So the fix according to the dealer is to look for issues like the press is not sufficiently anchored to prevent "bounce" and incomplete FL sizing, operator error, slightly overspec dies. He didn't say but probably case brass variations also. Anyway, he is lending me a set of used Hornady dies to try something different. Not having a small base die. After that it will be sending some off to @sneeze to run thru his. We are marking the cases that won't extraction until they cool.

Interesting problem. Thanks for all the input. Will update.

If the dealer is admitting something is wrong (which there clearly is), then they have to either fix it for you or replace/refund.

Had to deal with my fair share of professional shysters in the UK selling second-hand rifles, honestly second-hand car dealers are more reliable and trustworthy. Once got sold a rifle with an under-sized chamber (someone rechambered from 222 to 223, and did a poor job), then a 7mm-08 where the idiot had replaced the bolt with a crap PTG unit and fucked the job, due to the fact the locking lugs did not match those of the original bolt, leaving excess headspace.

The situation you are in reflects the problem I had in the second instance, rifle would chamber factory ammo fine and fire, but on extraction (lifting bolt and pulling back) the bolt would lift easily, but be very difficult to actually pull back. It was clear what was happening, as the brass would show signs of stretching (get yourself a case gauge-where you drop the brass in).

Impossible to explain how else you are getting issues. If you follow my instructions this will more than likely show up as being the problem (your fired cases should also show signs of excess length, growing a lot lengthways during firing). I'd insist to the dealer that they fire a few shots themselves and see. The fuckwits who sold me the rifle with excess headspace told me their gunsmith reckoned that 'All Remingtons are like that'.

Thankfully I managed to replace the bolt with an original Remington one off a shot-out rifle.

Never ever used them again, complete idiots.

I think dealer is wrong. It's not going to be a resizing issue. If you can chamber the case freely then the die has done its job.

Try a different brand of brass. (Not Federal, GLF, or Norma) Your brass is too soft for the load.

I'm going to defend the dealer here because as far as dealers go, I and the people I know who buy there rate him. At this point he is doing his best to help sort this, including talking to the NZ Ruger importer this week for input.

His position is that the three lug design is common to more than one brand and is known as a design to be picky and a tad weak on extraction, sensitive to any brass sizing issue. He did something we should have done which was to mark the brass that would not eject. He returned the doz reloaded brass he fired with three marked. I had the rifle owner around yesterday and with the magazine in we individually chambered each piece of fired brass. The three marked pieces all entered the chamber freely and all locked the bolt up on extraction. When I say "locked up", the bolt would lift freely to what seemed like the top of the stroke but could not be drawn back to open. As in the field after firing, the bolt opened after several attempts. In the field we assumed that there was a heat issue and that the brass ejected after cooling some. Wrong. In the workshop I made these attempts really slow and deliberate and I noticed that on the final successful bolt lift the bolt perceptibly clicked and lifted infintismally higher and free. We repeated this to be sure. Somehow, the bolt was sticking at that final point. I don't really have a clear picture in my head of the detailed mechanical operation of the bolt internals at that point. But what we now had was repeatability with the same pieces of brass.

The dealer lent me a used set of Hornady New Dimension dies. Same as my own. Keeping the three marked brass separate I annealed all the case necks, full length resized and decapped them, and length trimmed them. Then we ran them back thru the rifle chamber. No extraction issue. So we reloaded them with the same 139gn Hornady SSTs and same batch of 2208 but following @grandpamac advice, dropped from 42.8gn to 42.0gn load.

Now to shoot them.

In running the 12 sized cases through the rifle on a different four cases we felt a minute tad more resistance chambering at bolt closure. Hard to be sure but we marked these cases to track them on firing.

The 12 cases are mixed headstamp, Winchester, Sako and PPU plus one oddball. Now I know that will get a reaction but this is standard hunting ammo out to 200m, not long distance or bench rest. Mixed headstamp brass is immaterial accuracy-wise for this purpose and these are very accurate in this rifle. The three problem cases are each a different headstamp.

The other thing I did differently this time was to change from my Lee Classic Cast press (hard stop) to my RCBS Summit press (cam over). All the cases were carefully hand lubed to resize including brushing the inside of the neck. The used loaner
Hornady dies I cleaned internally with Isopropyl alcohol before using. I broke the Summit. A couple of the cases were more resistant to withdrawing from the die, not stuck but heavy. The cam-over was set to be just firm/crisp but not heavy. The value of using camover, I reasoned, was a consistent degree of resizing pressure from the press for each case. On a hard-stop press, like the Lee it's possible to get tired, inattentive or lazy on the sizing stroke and not make the fullest possible down stroke. In essence this is what the dealer was suggesting was happening on the extraction issue - some brass not being completely resized. If all the brass exhibited the extraction issue one could blame an out of spec die, or rifle for that matter. With only some cases and different ones each time one has to suspect the integrity of the sizing operation. If only some of the cases and the same ones each time, the problem has to be the case. Right?

Anyway, I don't know when the top-casting on the Summit started to break but it came apart when we were near the end of seating the bullets so we had to finish that operation on the Lee. I will discuss the Summit issue as an update on my old thread that originally reviewed it rather than hijack this thread.

So finally, our next step is to fire the 12 reloads and see what happens. Will be another 10 days or so to get to that and then I'll post the results here.

Maybe need to rerun this -
Has the rifle done this since new?
Has the rifle done this with factory ammo and if so does it do it with all brands.
Has it "clicked" every time the problem has occurred.
If so the phenomenon called "clickers" is reasonable well know in reloading circles.

Hop over to Ultimate Reloader for the best discription of causes.
https://ultimatereloader.com/2024/03...tness-formula/
Some you may have already eliminated.

I think the classic clicker is when the bolt can be raised fairly easily until near the top when resistance is felt (point of final primary extraction). Operating the bolt with more vigour causes the click. All caused by the body of the case being oversize for whatever reason or as Ultimate says, a chamber dimension issue.

When the bolt is hard to lift thoughout all its travel this is usually an excess shoulder length issue which could be caused by poor full length resizing practises or overload.

When the problem occurs has the bolt actually fully rotated? Failing the last wee bit may not be that obvious with some actions particularly short bolt throw types.

@zimmer, well that's interesting. "Clicker" describes the situation exactly. New to me. Clearly that site is oriented to selling specific high end gear and components. If I was chasing high end results....Anyway it's good to know it is a known thing and there is good info on what causes it.

This is a budget mass produced rifle for the average persons half doz hunts a year and a bit of regular range time. Usually with factory ammo. We're doing reloads to get the owner shooting more than half a box of factory a year - what ammo prices and average wages does to ya. Be good if we can find an acceptable load and technique to make it work. I think we are on the right track now.

I suspect we will finish up discarding any brass that results in a "clicker" at a given powder charge. In the meantime paying xtra attention to all the resizing disciplines is on the hi priority list - well it always is actually but stuff does happen.

Thanks for the info.

Hornady dies can have a noticeable issue with press force required to operate them, they produce good straight ammo but the power you have to put on the lever... I have a set of Hornady .308w dies here and the full length die is a bloody shocker when resizing. Both ways, case in and case out. I can't work out why either, not a case hardness issue as I've tried on a brand new fresh out of the box case that has never been fired. So not surprised you found a weakness in the press when using Hornady dies...

'Clickers' from my understanding is a weak primary extraction symptom - you get to the point where the case is not quite released and the forces to drive the bolt handle that last little bit are quite a bit higher leading you to think the bolt is fully open. Needs a little slap to get it going, or two or three opening attempts to get the case to unstick. Sounds very much like a dimensional issue with a minimum chamber possibly one cut with a separate body reamer and another neck/throat reamer to finish or for some reason the taper in the chamber isn't quite right.

I hear what you are saying about mixed brass - but the other point is mixed brass/mixed parentage/mixed number of firings. Dump it, get 20 rounds of the same parentage and see how that goes as different cases react differently and resize differently. If you are running mixed brass, it might be the same headstamp but from different batches of ammo, different batches of cartridge brass etc etc and it all could be behaving completely differently. The point of reloading is keeping everything you can control the same, and in this case you have a major unknown variable that means you don't have the level of control of the process you are needing. Start with 20 rounds the same parentage and have another go and see if it still results in sticking cases. If it does, get a small base die and try that and I'd also suggest that the Lee press is not the issue. I'd find some other option than the Hornady dies too not because they are crap but the issue with press force on them - it can't be helping.

I would suggest that the primary extraction issue is a problem down the road - first adjust the easy stuff and start with what you can control i.e. your reloading process. Get a known point of cases to start with, all the same batch and same roll of cartridge brass and restart everything with that. Even get one brand new case and take the press and gear to the range and do the experiment there. Measure and document the first load measurements and firing, OAL and ring the case at a few points and dimension it before and after firing and after reloading ). Load it and fire it 10 times (what I would consider the useful life of a case) and if you have no issues you might have an issue with the brass you are using - it doesn't last forever.

If you did that with 20 cases and 200 rounds of ammo that's a few years for the average hunter...

No, clickers aren't always caused by poor primary extraction. Have a read of Ultimate Reloaders causes. Or ggogle "clickers". Poor primary extraction design may exasperate the problem but it not the cause of the problem. Except on some older actions eg the Omarks were classic.
@Jhon Has this fault been present since the rifle was new?
Has it occurred with factory ammo or only with reloads?

@No.3 OK thks. I had not really clocked that with the Hornady dies and I run them in several calibres. But now that you mention it I have run in to the "tougher to resize" case a bit and prob thought I'd gotten lazy with the lubing. I'll start taking notes lol. I have started mirror polishing ny sizing buttons across my various die sets I use but these are loaners and not mine to mess with other than clean.
I hear you on the brass. The owner has some once fired factory brass that we could hang with for a while. All Hornady IIRC. I don't have a rifle in 7mm08 myself. The brass I have been using came to me as once fired but as you say, no guarantees. We'll get there. If the next steps don't get us there I'll try your protocol

Clickers can be the die or the chamber the early 7prc reamers were terrible for it

Originally Posted by zimmer

No, clickers aren't always caused by poor primary extraction. Have a read of Ultimate Reloaders causes. Or ggogle "clickers". Poor primary extraction design may exasperate the problem but it not the cause of the problem. Except on some older actions eg the Omarks were classic.
@Jhon Has this fault been present since the rifle was new?
Has it occurred with factory ammo or only with reloads?

Yes, you are correct - but if the mechanical side of the extraction process is working correctly a slightly stuck case should come free. If the cases are freeing up after a period of time, they are not solidly stuck by any stretch!

I have experienced this with the little ZKW645 I used to have, factory Winchester ammo no problem and three shots touching at 100m... Lovely little rifle until you tried to reload for it and the bastard was like an ex-wife and wouldn't let the shiny stuff go for you no matter how much you sweet talked it. Every second or third case needed to be popped free with a cleaning rod.

The issue as far as we could tell was with the Euro chamber taper not matching the modern full length resizing die - the case body was not being resized enough with the fired cases and the little mini mauser extractor was not positive enough to pop the cases free without sliding over the rim of the case. Sold it before I fixed the issue but apparently I needed unicorn $$$ European sized dies...

Mauser type actions with the positive claw and gigantic positive primary cam and a one-piece forged bolt that can't in theory be mistimed do not usually suffer from this issue. Or, the case rim or head departs from the case body and you have a separated case to deal with...

Greetings @Jhon and all,
I am with @No.3 with the need to have brass with the same headstamp and round count, preferably of the same batch. From my notes the Sako brass is about 10 grains heavier than the Winchester so should develop a little more velocity and pressure. The Hornady brass was about the same weight as Win. Another thing to include in your next range session would be to chronograph your test loads which would give you a better understanding of how pressure is related to the problem.
The interesting thing with handloading is that you more you learn the more profound your ignorance seems to become, at least it was that way for me. It is now over 50 years since I loaded my first cartridge and I am still learning. Stick with it.
Regards Grandpamac.
PS. Almost 50 years ago I almost tossed my handloading kit out of the cot. I was having endless problems loading for the .303. After I got my first .308 I vowed never to load another .303 round in my life. Today there are .303 rifles in the cabinet and I loads for them happily. Perhaps I have learned something in the years between.