LA Remmington 700 Bolt won’t close.

[Marv_2101]

I just installed a Criterion barrel cambered in 30-06 on my remmington 700. Checked head space with go and no go gauges MULTIPLE times even put a piece of scotch tape on back of the go gauge and bolt wouldn’t close. Take it off and it closes. Ejector was removed during all of this.

This is my concern I pulled out a box of factory federal fusion ammo 165 grain to check feeding and the first round fed in the chamber but the bolt was EXTREMELY hard to close. All other 19 rounds in the box fed fine and the bolt closed fine. No visual difference in the round that didn’t feed and even tried some Hornady match ammo and it fed fine and bolt closed fine.

Just scratch it up to a bad factory round?

 

[Haney]

You can stand the gun up and insert that round by hand and see if it sticks or falls out when you release finger pressure . Did you have the round under the extractor while chambering the trouble round ?

 

[Im2bent]

Did you retry the first one that was tight after all the others fed ok? You could blacken the bullet and the shoulder area of the case with a sharpie and see if it indicates where its interfering. Can you measure base to ogive or at least overall length and see if the one round is long for some reason? Were the any marks from the lands on the bullet when you removed it from the action?

 

[fdkay]

Was the bullet engraved by the rifling?

 

[Marv_2101]

You can stand the gun up and insert that round by hand and see if it sticks or falls out when you release finger pressure . Did you have the round under the extractor while chambering the trouble round ?

Yes round is under extractor. It’s ejecting fine just extremely hard to close.

 

[Marv_2101]

Did you retry the first one that was tight after all the others fed ok? You could blacken the bullet and the shoulder area of the case with a sharpie and see if it indicates where it’s interfering. Can you measure base to ogive or at least overall length and see if the one round is long for some reason? Were the any marks from the lands on the bullet when you removed it from the action?

I’ll double check all of this in the morning, but yes I tried chambering multiple times afterwards with no luck.

 

[Marv_2101]

Was the bullet engraved by the rifling?

I don’t believe so but I’ll double check.

 

[tekmann2377]

Was this a new action, or an used one? I had a new out of the box SA Rem 700 where the bolt was extremely hard to close on 50% of rounds... Like you needed a running start to get it to chamber. It did it to both factory and reloaded ammo. Turned out the extractor was slightly sticky as well as slightly oversize, and it didn't want to snap over the case rim.

 

[wvfarrier]

Loosen the barrel, chamber a dummy and tighten it down a little at a time and see where it starts binding

 

[iceng]

What he said. Double check with the barrel hand tight. See where it wants to sit.

 

[Terry Cross]

The bullet is not causing this.
Likely that the single round is out of spec with the shoulder datum being too long.
The other rounds clambering easily point heavily toward the barrel being fine.

It happens even with Federal. Hornady is the worst offender.