Thread: first time reloading.

Hey,

First attempt at reloading at a mates place. He loads for his WSM and 22-250, so I bought some second hand 243 dies, powder, pills and primers for a start.

So we found that the COAL theoretical was longer than we could possibly achieve as the Nosler Varmint BT's couldn't go in any less. The COAL measured theoretically 2.752. The actual we could seat to was 2.700".

We had problems with the Hornady neck seating die. We set it up in the Redding press using the Hornady instructions. First time we found it near impossible to remove the case from the die. After 3 attempts at butchered cases I took the die apart and found that previous owner had bent the centre spindle. Ah,ha. So I pinched the spindle from the full length reseating die and started again. Much better.

We loaded up a couple of cases without powder and found that the bolt was slightly tight to close when the bullet in place, yet a resized empty case was fine? (WHY?)

We started at 42g of ADI 2208 and loaded 3 per weight of powder, incrementing in 0.3g per triple, until we had loaded to max from the ADI table which worked out nicely at 11x3 = 33 cases.

Then we headed out to the range.

three shots at a target, new target per load and took as best a time as I could for most of the afternoon.

Somewhere in the middle of the loads I had 2 bullets touching and pulled the third :-[ booger. Then the groups got bigger and started to close up again until the penultimate load 42.7g. I got three rounds at 100m with a 0.28inch measurement outside edge to edge. The last group first round was too high pressure, could barely open the bolt, so we called it quits.

So summary. I think I have a load. Need to chrony it now. But why the resistance in closing the bolt, and what do I do about it?