GWarden,

  Be very careful about polishing cases and chambers. If carried to extremes the back thrust against the breech block will be increased substantially. Doing so would be the equivalent of leaving excess amounts of lube on the cases or chamber walls.

  An example of how much cases adhere to the chamber walls during firing, can be seen in guns that have excess headspace. The cases have to be trimmed after every firing and eventually separate at the web juncture. If things are to slick then the case doesn't stick to the chamber walls as it should and all this extra force is transferred to the breech face.

PETE

Boats,

  I think we all realize you're talking "What if". Actually a lot of what we're saying is "What if" to. 

  I don't think you'll have much of a problem with case separation if you keep the wad at the mouth of the case, no matter what thickness you use. My experience has come from setting the wad down on top of the powder, which in some cases, while working up a BP load, amounted to 3/8". Also, I think, the extra thickness of your cases should help in this regard to.

  It will be very interesting to see what kind of load you end up with and how close it comes to the mouth of the case with those everlastings and I hope you'll keep us informed on your progress.

  This wad, just in the mouth of the case, or sitting lightly on the powder, when breech seating, has always brought the thought to mind about how contrary it is to working up loads for fixed ammo.

PETE

Bob,

  Forgive me, I couldn't resist.  I don't happen to have the Nov. 05 issue of PS yet.

  Do recall seeing the article a coupla months back, but not being an Ackley fan I didn't read it, and that issue is at the recyclers a long time ago.

PETE

Bob,

  Well, the question comes up.... How come you have to polish the cases or chamber in order to have easy extraction? I know personally you've shot literally hundreds of rounds in your CPA using "regular" cases without any problems with extraction that I've heard about. And this mostly all breech seating where if extraction problems woud show up over time, it would certainly be with that method.

  To me the problem is in the way the cases are made. I definitely would not fool with the chamber!

  With machined cases the elastic limits are a lot less than for work hardened cases and that's why the recommendation for polishing things if you have extraction problems. I can see doing this if "regular" cases stick, but I would be very leary of doing so with machined ones.

  Personally I would FL size the machined cases several times in order to try and work harden them a bit. I think this might take care of the problem.

  It will be interesting to see if the everlasting cases will have this problem, or whether the problem will be worse due to the thicker walls having less elasticity.

PETE

Bob,

  Well, I'm not here to convince anybody of anything. I'm sure in the end you'll do what you want. I just gave you the standard warning any knowledgeable gunsmith would give you. 

PETE