After all the advice I went back to square one. I first checked my scale to find it accurate. Then I resized some cases to push the shoulder back as far as I could. Checked trimmed length. overall length of loaded round and made sure no excess lube was present. I used 60 grs of h4831 with a 120 grn balistic tip and what happened? My action locked up tighter than a drum. The gunsmith told me I was lucky to be alive. He said the lugs were mushroomed which he resurfaced. He also checked the chamber with his reamer and said that he got "quite a bit of meat out", and that this could have been the cause of high pressure. I'm going to pick it up on sunday. Any thoughts?:o

I'm surely not a gunsmith but if he got a lot of meat out, it wasn't chambered properly. You may have better luck now but in lieu of the past events I'd start low on charge. Good luck brother and keep us posted.

Sure sounds like a bad chamber job to me. Good luck with the new chamber.

I'm surely not a gunsmith but if he got a lot of meat out, it wasn't chambered properly. You may have better luck now but in lieu of the past events I'd start low on charge. Good luck brother and keep us posted.

Oh Yeah!

I know there are many good gunsmiths out there, but having encountered several "operations" over the years, about half have been dismal to dangerous. Misaligned chambers, inadequate headspace, excessive lead.....

Oh Yeah!

I know there are many good gunsmiths out there, but having encountered several "operations" over the years, about half have been dismal to dangerous. Misaligned chambers, inadequate headspace, excessive lead.....
He checked and said the head spase was good. I'm not sure what you mean by excess lead. If that is the space between the bullet and the rifling, he claimed that most factory guns are a little in excess. This is where I'm also confused about seating depth, taper of bullet, oal, etc?

Sure sounds like a bad chamber job to me. Good luck with the new chamber.
Thanks, I sure hope that was the problem. I presume that this could have adversely affected the accuracy of factory loads which is why I began reloading in the first place.

I hope your latest gunsmith has it figured out properly bluetick. A local gunsmith that had "problem" guns brought into him tested out starting loads by setting up a portable bench, then bungying the gun down to the rest and pulling the trigger remotely with a string, behind a barrier. He's since passed, but not by a blown up gun. You might want to consider that for your first shot out of the new chamber job. Good luck.

Well, I picked up my rifle from the gunsmith and he had test fired it with a factory round with no problems. He does a lot of reloading and claims to not have much luck with H4831. He suggested RL 22 or for a faster burn RL19. I've not found reloading data for this powder; if anyone knows please clue me in. He also explained that I could seat a bullet very shallow and then chamber it, taking measurements before and after; then seat it .010" deeper to insure the bullet does not enter the rifling. Is this a common way to custom seat bullets? I hope the new chamber has solved my major problems and I'm going to reload some rounds tonight and hopefully get an early day off from work to go shooting. Again, thanks for all the helpful advice, Bluetick.:p

Alliant has a bit of data for the .264.
http://www.alliantpowder.com/reloaders/RecipeList.aspx?gauge=&gtypeid=2&title=Centerfire%20Load

Bye
Jack