7mm STW throat length?

[uncyboo]

I have had a Remington Sendero in 7mm STW since '96 or so. Bought the gun new. When I bought it I also bought 5 boxes of factory ammo, so I could shoot right away and have brass. I finished shooting up those hundred rounds about 8 years ago and am just now developing handloads for it. Got the brass all prepped and charged and began to find a seating depth.

My usual procedure is to find the lands (if possible) to have a baseline and adjust seating depth from there. This is what I ran into....

The cartridge on the left is barely seated. COAL is 3.82 in.
The center cartridge has a COAL of 3.65 in.
The cartridge on the right has a COAL of 3.6 in., which I believe is SAAMI standard COAL. The marks are longer because I actually closed the bolt on this one.

Here's the wierd part -

This pic is the same cartridges rolled over 180*. There are no land marks on this side of the bullets. I need comments please. I've loaded for many different rifles over the last 25+ years and have never seen this before.

 

[Creeper]

Assuming your lands aren't BBQ'd or the throat and lead are not poorly cut... the chamber might be a bit on the large side, or the cases have been full length sized on the small side.
Either way, it sounds like the dummy is "laying in the bottom" of the chamber. In other words, the dummy is eccentric in the chamber.

Got any unsized cases? If so, see if you can chamber one... if you can, try making a dummy out of that.

C

 

[uncyboo]

Thanks for that response. Rifle has 100 Remington factory rounds through it, so I wouldn't think the throat has eroded much at all. All my brass was fired in this rifle. I did use a FL Hornady die and sized until about 90% of the neck was sized. Didn't touch the shoulder. And I sized all of them, so I can't do that check. I hear what you are saying about the round laying in the bottom of the chamber. But on the longer cartridges, I pushed them in until I felt resistance and then had to lightly tap the round out with a cleaning rod. They were pretty firmly in the rifling. On the last one that was 3.60, I heard it snap under the extractor and the bolt pulled it out of the chamber, but still had rifling marks on it.

I had never inspected unchambered factory ammo as I never suspected any issues, so I don't know if it was doing it with factory ammo or not, and I don't have any more.

 

[uncyboo]

or the throat and lead are not poorly cut

This is my suspicion, actually, but wanted some other opinions first.

 

[Creeper]

Take it to a 'smith and have them borescope the chamber... or pull the barrel and inspect the chamber directly. That's about the only way you're going to tell if the barrel is copacetic. You can also check the chamber dimensions and concentricity while your at it.

If you want to get really fancy, send the barrel to a benchrest rifle builder, tell them what it's for and they can recut the chamber and make you a custom resizing die with the same ream they use to recut the chamber... perfect concentricity and fit.

Cheers,
C