Dirty gun = Pressure issues?

[ddowning]

Ejector marks and flat primers.. and you’re unsure what the cause was?


The problem isn’t “barrel cleaning” as it never is. It’s loading hot as hell and having your bullets near, or touching the lands.

You play on the ragged edge and you will have all kinds of problems. You load smart, and they go away.

You are exactly right. There is a reason guys stopped loading to top pressures in prs. Guys used to blow primers every time it rained. Now most shoot really mild loads to avoid issues. Adding 2 clicks to the scope is a lot easier than dealing with problems with pressure.

 

[eric1115]

So by that line of thinking I would have to load my 6 Creed way down and not see its full potential just in case there’s a slight buildup of carbon, tiny piece of dirt in the bore, etc… no thanks. I’ll spend 10 minutes cleaning every 300 rounds on this particular rifle and keep enjoying my 109s at 2880. It’d take me way longer than that to see how much I have to back off on my powder charge to where I never ever see pressure no matter how many rounds I shoot, and it’s a pretty low powder charge anyways, as much as 2gr lower than book loads I’ve seen for the same combo.

To further expand on this for the newer reloaders,

The problem is that when you load up to pressure under normal conditions and then back off a tiny bit such that not cleaning will show problems, you are setting yourself up with a razor thin margin between "fine" and "problems". Anything that increases pressure like water in the chamber/on your ammo, heat (hot day or a round sitting for a minute in a warm chamber), a round that falls on the ground and then gets chambered with a piece of debris/dirt use up that tiny margin and if you get multiples you get big issues.

It's what I was trying to express with the automotive analogy above. There's a reason GM tuned a 6.0 to make 360 hp in the 3/4T trucks, rather than running it at the 500+ that it regularly (and pretty easily) can make when modified. Stock tune leaves LOTS of margin for bad gas, hot day, heavy load. It leaves some power on the table in order to do that, but unless you're really good at knowing what to watch for you're running some risks and losing reliability.

Edit: And @ddowning expressed what I'm trying to say, with more clarity and 75% fewer words as I was writing this. Well done!

 

[Tanner]

G

To further expand on this for the newer reloaders,

The problem is that when you load up to pressure under normal conditions and then back off a tiny bit such that not cleaning will show problems, you are setting yourself up with a razor thin margin between "fine" and "problems". Anything that increases pressure like water in the chamber/on your ammo, heat (hot day or a round sitting for a minute in a warm chamber), a round that falls on the ground and then gets chambered with a piece of debris/dirt use up that tiny margin and if you get multiples you get big issues.

It's what I was trying to express with the automotive analogy above. There's a reason GM tuned a 6.0 to make 360 hp in the 3/4T trucks, rather than running it at the 500+ that it regularly (and pretty easily) can make when modified. Stock tune leaves LOTS of margin for bad gas, hot day, heavy load. It leaves some power on the table in order to do that, but unless you're really good at knowing what to watch for you're running some risks and losing reliability.

Edit: And @ddowning expressed what I'm trying to say, with more clarity and 75% fewer words as I was writing this. Well done!

Good parallel and point well taken.