Post by gunpoor on Dec 6, 2017 23:03:50 GMT -5
I had my dad's tang safety Ruger M77 rebarreled to 22/250 with an E.R. Shaw heavy varmint barrel last year but shot it very little and was getting failure to extract sometimes. The rifle shot amazingly well with one particular load with my S-I-L behind the rifle last spring without any signs of excessive pressure. I returned the rifle to the gunsmith that installed the barrel and he returned it a couple days later and said he polished the chamber and it works fine now. I never fired the gun this summer because of bad cataracts which were surgically repaired in July, but I was busy moving my elderly M-I-L and mother this fall. The wife and I road tripped to Washington state over thanksgiving to see my younger son and his family and while there we took both of our22/250s to the range. The first shot of my new go-to load blew the primer and wouldn't extact. I never shot it again until after I came home and pulled a bullet and weighed the powder charge and it was dead on the money. I reseated the bullet and fired the rifle again and it wouldn't extract but after removing the empty with a cleaning rod upon examination the primer was heavily flattened. I dumped all the powder from my loaded rounds and also what was in my 1 pound bottle of powder thinking maybe I mixed powder accidentally, then I loaded up one round using fresh powder from my 8 pound canister but when shot it flattened the primer but didn't enlarge the pocket which was what happened previously. This load was worked up using WLRP primers but I started over with load work up using CCI # 200 primers since they are not as hot but haven't made it to the range yet. I have never had this happen in all my years of reloading over a vast array of cartridges. I am totally perplexed. If anyone has any insight about this please enlighten me. Thanks, Dennis