Tight .270 Win once fired brass

[Cotys]

I have a lot of once fired 270 Win brass from my brother in law. He hunts and target shoots with it, I probably get a box or two of brass per month from him. He is shooting a Savage 110 with Accu-trigger, I shoot a Remington 700 (full Multicam camo).

The problem I have is that the brass is tight in my Remington. I loaded 30 rounds of with different powder loads to shoot through the Chrony. I did a full length resize on all of them. About half were very tight when closing the action, even after the full length resize. I realize I am shooting "fire formed" brass from someone else's rifle.

On the second batch, I lowered the sizing die to where the shell plate made full contact with the die. The problem seems to be that last little bit of brass that doesn't get into the sizing die. The results were much better with only a few being tight when closing the bolt. Once they have been fired in my rifle, they are fine.

Should I be using a small base .270 die for these? (I'm guessing there is one.) Or just size them best I can and fire form them to my rifle? I traded for a box of dies, this set was one of them. It is an RCBS set that appears to never been used.

It is interesting the chamber difference between the Savage and Remington.

[Caspian_45]

I think you need to get the cartridge mic die/gauge to check that your sizing die is sizing the brass to the correct length for your chamber.

[Cotys]

I think you need to get the cartridge mic die/gauge to check that your sizing die is sizing the brass to the correct length for your chamber.

I started out checking each case with my Lyman max length template (gauge for all size brass to identify too long). It turns out they all were too long. I have trimmed every case to 2.530 per the Hornady manual, including the ones that were very tight.

[Roadrider18]

You should drop every round of ammunition (especially bottleneck ammunition) you reload in a case gage.

Dillon sells the L.E. Wilson for 270. Pick one up. You want to resize your brass only to the extent required to pass the gage test. Set you resizing die depth in the press accordingly.

[George]

+1 to the L.E. Wilson drop gauge. Use it to compare a fired case from YOUR chamber to the ones being re-sized. Headspace is fine once the resized case head is at or below the level of the fired case head in the gauge.

Even if case is tight on first firing in your rifle it should be fine once you resize it again.