7mm Magnum Nosler brass are hard to close

TackDriver284 · Jun 20, 2016

I bought a box of Nosler brass for my 7mm Magnum custom rifle, 23 pieces of new brass are able to chamber smoothly and two pieces are a little hard to chamber, so I fired all the cases and full sized all 25 pieces. I chambered all the brass, and now 7 pieces of brass are hard to close the bolt, the remaining is fine. I checked all the brass with the Hornady headspace gauge and compared it to a fired case, the bump back is .002 to .003 shoulder bump. So I got a Marks a Lot and painted the shoulders and belts of the hard to close Nosler brass and chambered them in my gun and there is no contact on the shoulder, but there are shiny marks on the belts on the inside of the belts facing the shoulders. Shiny marks are on one side of the case belt only, is there runout on the belt? Is it thick on one side ? Side note, I resized 75 pieces of Remington and Norma brass right after, no problems except the Noslers. I had the same problem with the 7 STW several weeks ago. Rem brass worked just fine for the 7STW. Any help would be nice. Thanks

preacher · Jun 21, 2016

Back in the late '90s, I gave a nice, customized Mod 700 Sendero 7mm STW to a Pastor friend of mine. I had given him 50rds of 140BT reloads with the rifle. When he ran out, I bought $200 worth of 7mm STW from Art Alphins A-Square ammo (160PT) and had it sent directly to him in Ohio. NONE of it would chamber! It was a total loss! IF that belt is out of spec, it will NOT chamber. Period. Most factory chambers are so sloppy they, at least, will chamber the round, but a nice, properly set up custom rifle...nah! Good luck, just try different makes of brass. Try buying like 20rds each of different makes from Gunbroker.com. See which works best. Good luck to you Pard!

TackDriver284 · Jun 22, 2016

I was hoping that members of Nosler would chime on this issue,,,,

TackDriver284 · Jun 22, 2016

preacher":241l1j0x said:
Back in the late '90s, I gave a nice, customized Mod 700 Sendero 7mm STW to a Pastor friend of mine. I had given him 50rds of 140BT reloads with the rifle. When he ran out, I bought $200 worth of 7mm STW from Art Alphins A-Square ammo (160PT) and had it sent directly to him in Ohio. NONE of it would chamber! It was a total loss! IF that belt is out of spec, it will NOT chamber. Period. Most factory chambers are so sloppy they, at least, will chamber the round, but a nice, properly set up custom rifle...nah! Good luck, just try different makes of brass. Try buying like 20rds each of different makes from Gunbroker.com. See which works best. Good luck to you Pard!

I mentioned that Remington and Norma worked just fine, never had any issues except for Nosler brass.

What brass are you referring to with your "not able to chamber" issue?

preacher · Jun 23, 2016

I don't know who made it for A2 back then as it was stamped 7mmSTW A2 ammo. ? You got me. I always thought that Norma made Nosler brass? It could have been a Friday Evening run batch?

TackDriver284 · Jun 23, 2016

preacher":9vqh3ic1 said:
I don't know who made it for A2 back then as it was stamped 7mmSTW A2 ammo. ? You got me. I always thought that Norma made Nosler brass? It could have been a Friday Evening run batch?

Funny thing was when I called Nosler months ago about my 7 STW brass issue, the tech was real rude and blamed it on my gun for not chambering their brass 100% of the time. I told him that my Norma, Remington and Winchester brass chambers perfectly 100% of the time except for Nosler brass. I even checked headspace several times, readjusted the dies, still did not work. He would not hear any of it but told me " We have the world's finest engineers that make our brass, so the problem is your gun". I have no beef with Nosler, but he could have tried to help me in some way. LMAO, what a turd. So its the reason I sent my 7 STW to my gunsmith, ( due to unavailability to good brass ) to have it rechambered to .300 Win Mag because Lapua makes better brass IMO. So far, two of my custom rifles won't work with Nosler brass, looks like I won't ever buy Nosler brass again and I do buy their bullets for some of my hunting / shooting applications. I have used Norma, Lapua and Remington brass for more than 25 years, and would like to try Nosler brass and had issues on the first box I bought from Nosler, not one caliber, but for both rifles. As of now, I took Nosler brass for my new 6.5 Creedmore off my bucket list and bought 200 pieces of Norma brass. I don't think Nosler brass will be an issue for my Creedmore anyway since it don't have a belt, its the belt of the Nosler brass that is causing the chambering issues in my custom 7 Mag and 7 STW because of the tight tolerance in the chambers. If the Nosler tech had not been rude and try or help to fix the issue, I would not come to this point. :roll:

truck driver · Jun 24, 2016

Though I have not experienced a problem yet with Nosler brass in my M70 7 mag I have had one that balked going into the sizing die. The brass was SPS seconds and arrived looking like Remington brass with the case mouths bent .