Okay, so I'm due another update. Buckle up, because this is a wall of text.
Got the gun back from my gunsmith. He showed me his trick to get the thing out, and it was pretty cool. He reports no damage to the chamber or rifling so that is positive. Bolt handle repaired and he did a nice job on that if I do say so. It's still a weird bolt in that the previous owner basically shaved half the material down, but he matched the profile as needed for the rifle.
Now that I got it back and assembled it, I decided I needed to try it. So first things first, I took the 5 pieces of fired brass from the fateful range day, prepped them with the same dies and such that I used previously and stuck 5 different bullet types in them. For obvious reasons there was no powder or primers involved in this test.
So this is where things get interesting. First bullet was a 300gr solid of some sort (all of these came from my "extras and leftovers" pile, so I can't be 100% sure on makers, but I set their COAL based on matching profiles in the variety of loading manuals I have. This particular one sat at 3.590 IIRC and it fed in fine, bolt closed fine, came out fine.
Then the 270's came up and things started getting interesting. The first one bolt closed fine, but didn't want to come up. My PTSD kicked in hard here, but I gently thwacked the handle till it popped up. Put it to the side. The next 270, a 250 and 230 all were about the same, but none of them nearly locked the handle. So 4/5 were unhappy.
Mind you, this is after I had cleaned the dies expectionally well, but 4/5 with issues made me think die issue. These were definitely antiquated Pacific dies after all. So I got a set of RCBS out, cleaned them, pulled the bullets and ran the brass through there. First thing I noticed is that I had a fair amount more resistance in the handle of the press when running with these dies on the downstroke (FL sizing) and maybe a touch more on the up (necking). So I queued up all the bullets again, and started testing.
There was...a resounding difference. Bolt handle was smooth on all bullet types, no pressure on extraction, really no issues of any kind I noticed. So I'm tentatively saying that the "stick" might have been caused by dies that need to go to the parts bin. Or stored with a note saying "not for this rifle!".
Now, unfortunately the day was not a complete success. The other ongoing issue is generally getting the rifle to feed correctly. I think the "stick" was really two parts. First being that the dies were bad, but that was exaggerated by the feed issue, in that if the round didn't come up onto the bolt face correctly, it'd get shoved into a weird spot. And then I stroked another in behind it to jam it in place where the extractor couldn't hook it anyways.
So keep in mind that this rifle is setup with a magnum length piece of bottom metal and box, but apparently it uses the original long action spring and follower. So it just is never quite aligned right. Maybe it's me, but when putting rounds in you have to make sure each is straight and level or it won't come up right and get caught by the bolt, or worse, they'll just pop up out of the box when they shouldn't. So I think I need to see if I can source a new spring/follower setup.
Interestingly, this led me down a dark and winding path to my "box O random parts that came with this rifle and a trapdoor carbine" that I hadn't looked at in 7 years. Mainly because I thought it was all trapdoor parts. As it turns out, it had the original 1917 butt plates, some original bottom metal, some triggers, some sights, and such. But not a spring or follower. But hey, that box had more fun stuff in it than I knew. So back to the search for parts on this one.
The 416 is still pending. I got a replacement block but my gunsprings order is backordered still. I will probably just have to cancel and pay the ebay tax to get one from there since I don't want to wait all summer.
