Loaded round hard to extract

[Ike Clanton]

Gonna keep this short and sweet.
Bought new starline 458 Socom brass. I sized, chamfered and deburred.
Rounds chambered in and out fine after seating the bullets deep enough. Shot many rounds wonderfully.

Took once fired shells and cleaned then resized and checked OAL. Made the same load but now the cases stick up out of the Tromix case gauge by a hair and don’t extract without a decent amount of force and sometimes a mortar clear. All of these pass the case gauge test except for being slightly over flush. Please help this make sense to me as I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.

[Astocks2622]

Welcome to 458 socom. I had very similar issues, and finally tracked it down to a loose, reverse engineered chamber, and loose Lee dies. After firing, the case expands to the loose chamber, and the loose die doesn't bump the shoulder or case taper back enough. I eventually bought the dies straight from tromix, and most of my problems went away. When I finally bought a tromix barrel and bolt, I stopped having issues. If the brass won't sit fully flush, or even sightly recessed in the gauge, it will not chamber or extract reliably. Try tighter dies, or slightly shaving a bit off the shell holder. Those were my experiences.

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[Ike Clanton]

Damn glad someone else feels my pain. I’ve got a full Tromix upper, bolt etc so I can assume that’s in spec. I’ll look at the dies. That was my suspicion since every factory round I have is smooth as butter. Much appreciated.

[Astocks2622]

I can't guarantee that you're not crazy, but I know I've experienced the same madness. 458 is a tricky/finicky bugger. What dies are you using?

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[Unclenick]

Ike,

When you have one of these in the case gauge, measure the gauge with your caliper and then measure it again with a resized case in place and determine how much it is sticking up. In addition to messing with the shell holder (you may want it intact for a new die if you can't make this one work), try running the case up into the die, counting to five and withdrawing it, turn it a third of a turn in the shell holder and repeat the count of five in the die, turn it another third and repeat for the last time. See if that shortens the cases enough to stop being proud on the case gauge. If that doesn't set the shoulder back enough, remove the decapper pin from the die and put the case in the shell holder, and slip a feeler gauge under it that is the thickness of the excess length sticking out of the back of the gauge. This will move the case up enough to go that much further into the die for shoulder setback.

[Ike Clanton]

Alright I’ll try that. I’m using Hornady dies. Worst case maybe I’ll need to buy Redding dies. I’ve loaded a few rounds for load development however. Will these rounds be safe to fire or will they have pressure spikes?

[Unclenick]

If you get dies from Forster (or Redding or Lee, at least, during past normal times) you can pay them to custom size and hone the dies to your specification. If you send them some fired cases they can guarantee to set the shoulder back to factory size and also, with Forster, can hone the neck to give you your desired number of thousandths below bullet diameter without expanding anything, which saves brass life.

[Ike Clanton]

It appears you guys were right. The shoulder isn’t getting pushed back enough. So i will contact Hornady first but in the event I have to grind the shell plate like you guys recommended could I just shave the die itself down a bit. Seeing that the shell plate also works with .308 I would rather not grind the plate down.

[Unclenick]

Also, that thins the deck of the plate, making it a little less strong for extracting cases. That's why I suggested shims. The die can be ground shorter on a lathe easily enough. Hard to keep it uniform doing it freehand, though it can be accomplished.

[tangolima]

If the shoulder is not pushed back enough, you have negative head clearance, and you should have had difficulty chambering the round. If you don't have problem chambering, only extracting, the brass could be too big for the chamber diameter-wise. The later case may require a small base die, or reaming of the chamber.

Before you grind anything trying to push the shoulder back further, check whether the die is already bottomed out on the shell plate when a brass is being sized. If not, just lower the die a bit further. I myself don't like shimming the brass with feeler gauge. It is like using a ruler as a pry bar.

-TL

PS. I did grind die shorter on a belt sander on several occasions. No big deal. May be a bit hard to resell the die though.

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[Ike Clanton]

So the die is already screwed down to the shell plate. If I screw it father it doesn’t seem to me that it would have any affect.

[tangolima]

Originally Posted by Ike Clanton

So the die is already screwed down to the shell plate. If I screw it father it doesn’t seem to me that it would have any affect.

Check again when a brass is being resized. You may see a gap between the bottom of the die and the top of the shell plate. Press flexes under stress. You can screw down the die a bit further.

-TL

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[reynolds357]

Originally Posted by Ike Clanton

Gonna keep this short and sweet.
Bought new starline 458 Socom brass. I sized, chamfered and deburred.
Rounds chambered in and out fine after seating the bullets deep enough. Shot many rounds wonderfully.

Took once fired shells and cleaned then resized and checked OAL. Made the same load but now the cases stick up out of the Tromix case gauge by a hair and don’t extract without a decent amount of force and sometimes a mortar clear. All of these pass the case gauge test except for being slightly over flush. Please help this make sense to me as I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.

One thing that will help us annealing brass. If that does not work, you can mill 5/1000 increments off shell holder until problem is cured.

[hammie]

Couldn't this problem be more easily solved with a set of Redding competition shell holders?

[Unclenick]

No. The Redding Competition Shell Holders raise the deck from +0.002" to +0.010" in 0.002" increments. They leave cases longer on the assumption you have something longer than a SAAMI minimum chamber. They have none that reduce the deck to shorten cases.

Reducing the deck has a limit, as the steel needs to be strong enough to extract a case from the sizing die without bending. That, and as the OP mentioned, keeping the shell holder good for other cartridges that use it are reasons I prefer to try getting the case to take a set in the die or else using the shim-under-the-case-head approach or else grinding the die shorter on the lathe. You can grind a die manually, but it takes some setting up and a bit of manual skill. You need a rigid flat surface like a granite surface plate or multiple layers of plate glass that have been glued together to prevent flexing. You put spray adhesive on the back of a sheet of wet/dry silicon carbide paper in the 220-grit range and wet it with mineral spirits and grasp the die near the mouth and press down and slide it back and forth on the paper, rotating it a quarter turn in your hand every few strokes so any tendency for the pressure to favor cutting deeper on one side or the other gets canceled out. You stop, rinse the grit off in a small pail of mineral sprits every once in a while, and measure its length to check progress. The lathe with a toolpost grinder is much faster and easier.

[Ike Clanton]

So are these rounds I already loaded unsafe to fire?

[hammie]

@unclenick: I misunderstood how the redding shell holders worked. Thanks for correcting me.

What would be the point of them? You could just back off the die a little. I think I just wasted 80$ on a set.

Addendum: @unclenick: I just mike'd a set of competition shell holders. The bottom "deck" drops down, or gets thinner as the correction increases. So that means you're backing the cartridge out of the die. You are so very right. I always learn something here. I like your idea in post #7. I have a .300 Win mag with a minimum chamber and maximum dies. I sent the dies back to RCBS along with a fired case and they fixed it for free. In the past I've tried grinding shell holders or die bottoms, but it is almost impossible to control the depth of removal or get the finished plane perpendicular to the central axis of the die body.

[Unclenick]

Hammie,

The purpose of the competition shell holders is to get the sizing dimensions better locked in by having the sizing die mouth compress against the deck a little. This gets you around variations in press frame stretch altering the die position on your cases due to different amounts of sizing force being required by different individual cases. It will make the most difference on the least rigid press and with the least consistent brass and with the least consistent job of lubing the cases.

[Ike Clanton]

Boy do I dumb. You guys were right. I tightened my die down a little more to the point of cam over and bam! The shoulder was visibly pushed back more and the rounds now extract perfectly. Thanks again for all the help. I figure by the time I’m too old to shoot I may have this while reloading thing figured out.

[thump_rrr]

Originally Posted by Ike Clanton

It appears you guys were right. The shoulder isn’t getting pushed back enough. So i will contact Hornady first but in the event I have to grind the shell plate like you guys recommended could I just shave the die itself down a bit. Seeing that the shell plate also works with .308 I would rather not grind the plate down.

So you are willing to buy a set of Redding dies but don't want to grind down a $5 shell holder?
I would grind down the shell holder and determine if it solves the problem.
If it does you buy a separate shell holder for 308 or you have the die turned down.
Worst case it costs you $5.00.

I use a Forster Co-Ax so I don't have conventional shell holders.
I had to turn down my 5.7x28 die 0.005" to get proper headspace

[Ike Clanton]

Hahaha well when you put it like that I guess you’re right! If I hadn’t figured out the problem I guess it woulda been cheaper to buy a new shell plate.