A buddy of mine purchased a new model 70 made by FN in South Carolina. It's a featherweight 243. It's nice looking rifle, not compared to a pre 64 model, but it's nice. He has been complaining about the bolt being stiff or sticky closing and opening. Sure enough it is that, we tried some factory Win powerpoints and some Federal Fusion rounds. They had some resistance on closing and opening the bolt. The same after firing. Nothing abnormal showing on the cases. I loaded some Win.,Fed and Nosler cases up with a Starting load of 39.5 gr. of IMR4350 with a 90 gr. Nosler ballistic tip. Again some fair resistance opening and closing the bolt. Firing those loads had the same resistance when opening and closing the bolt. No flattened primers or scrapes or marks of any kind on the cases. On the second loading of the Nosler brass it was a bit smoother. I was wondering, since this is a new rifle with not many rounds through it, if the extractor claw or maybe the ejector may be the cause of the resistance. He's not so happy with it and I'm thinking maybe it needs a few more cycles on it and it might smooth out. BTW, the bolt will cycle smoothly on an empty chamber. And the rifle shoots pretty good with that starting load. Any one seen this?