+1 especially if you have one with a worn throat.Military or commercial brass? Garands and M1As are very hard on brass and my experience has been that commercial brass is softer than military brass.
Result is that it stretches more than military and doesn't last as long.
You will get start getting case head seperations at 5 -7 reloads with military brass. Less with commercial.
Full length resize and trim to length each time also.
New to reloading and I began reloading for my M1 Garand. I wanted to test the cycling function with my Garand. All safety precautions were taken as I loaded a clip of reloads into the magazine. I then pulled back on the op-rod and ejected the first round, released the op-rod and chambered the next round. At around the third cartridge entering the chamber, I am unable to pull the op-rod back to extract the round. The first time this happened I had to disassemble the M1 and (while pointed in a safe direction), used a rubber mallet to unjam the oprod and extract the round. Upon inspection of the round I noticed a very dark narrow ring around the front of the case neck where it meets the seated bullet. A quick check online doesn't show much except to clean the chamber really good. So I did that and repeated the check. This time I put two new commercial rounds in the clip go cycle those first, and with no trouble. On the first reload, I am once again left with a round stuck in the chamber.
While the good news is it's not my rifle that's causing the trouble, the bad news is it's the reloads and I don't know what the problem would be that is causing this. Would this be an issue to shoot or would the pressure be enough to safely cycle the M1 or am I risking excessive pressure or force on the bolt if I attempt to shoot it in this condition?
I used a classic lee loader which resizes the neck, and the casing is suppose to already be formed to my M1's chamber as these casings were previous commercial loads shot through it. The load data is a Nosler HPBT 155gr with 46-47gr IMR4895. OAL is 3.34 but I've kept them between 3.31 and 3.32.
Anyone? Help?