Well, the plot thickens. I'm not 100% sure what's going on yet, but I almost suspect this rifle has a tight chamber. I have cases that Tom gave me (the owner I bought it from) that he had resized and I mic'd them. They seemed pretty much right on the money with the exception that the overall case length was about 9-10/1000th's short. But I dropped one into the chamber and I had to cam the bolt down noticeably hard. It didn't just close. I tried another and it was the same way. As well, the already loaded ones he gave me were the same way. So I set up my new RCBS resizing die, and ran a couple of the empty Norma cases he gave me through them. Full length resized them. Put them under the digital calipers and to the best I could measure, the dimensions were pretty well right on the money to Brian's drawing above except, it looks like he'd trimmed them just a hair short. But I wouldn't think 9-10/1000's off the case mouth ahead of the shoulder would matter that much. I still had to cam them down to get the bolt shut. I then loaded a 160gr Hawk round nose bullet into the case. First attempt I had trouble getting the seating die set up properly....and got it about 10/1000's too short. It would feed, but I still had to push a bit. Took the bullet puller and pulled it out and reseated it to 10/1000's long and tried it. It fed well, but then got stuck in the chamber. It stuck when I tried to pull the bolt out. I muscled the bolt back and it pulled the bullet out and left it in the chamber. So I got a cleaning rod and bumped the bullet back out. Ran it through the sizing die again, then reseated the bullet over about ten minutes moving it a few 1/1000th at a time and got it right at 3.0600" overall. Did a second one and got it at 3.0595 (my fancy Mitoyo goes to 1/10,000th's....who knows how truly accurate it is but it's seemed good throughout the years....) Dropping both into the magazine, they feed better but still not as smooth as most of my other rifles. I still had to push a little bit, though not nearly like before. And, I still had to cam the bolt closed with some force, though now the bullets didn't stick in the throat. So all this being said, I'm not sure what's going on. The 10/1000's of overall length depending on where the bullet is seated does indeed made a difference with these Hawk 160's. I don't know if a 154 would feed a little better? But for the bolt being hard to close, the only thing I can figure is the chamber might be on the snug side. His sized cases and the ones I just resized with a brand new full length resizing die seemed to be equally snug. Maybe I need my gunsmith to get a reamer and clean the chamber up a little? I set the sizing die up so that there's a slight bit of click where the top of the ram bottoms out on the bottom of the die. I can't get it any tighter. There's no gap between the ram and die. It could be the dies, but it seems like his dies and my new ones size them about the same... In the meantime, I'll try some different bullets to see if they feed into it better. The gun is usable as-is. But it's not feeding as smoothly as I'd heard they do even with full length resizing and the darn near perfect overall length. I'm open to all suggestions here. Keep you guys posted.
