Henry 357 Chamber Length?

[JohnB-40]

I need some advice with what is happening with my 357 Mag loads. I use a 158 gr RNFP (Badman) and CFN (Penn) for my reloads. The OAL on these rounds is 1.590". My final inspection of the completed round includes a check with a gauge.They feed and chamber fine in my Winchester 73 and my Vaqueros. I was shooting with a friend last week who had his Henry Big Boy 357 with him. My rounds would feed from the mag into the breech with out a problem,but not all the way in. About .125" of the case was protruding. I asked if he had been using 38 specials in the rifle and the reply was yes. I thought it was crud build-up from the shorter round. I spoke to him later and said he had throughly cleaned the chamber and now a factory 357 round (AE) would chamber,which it wouldn't before,but not my reload.........Chamber length?

 

[buck460XVR]

Since they are a reputable manufacturer, I'd assume the Henry chamber length is within SAAMI specs. Iffin a Factory load fits fine, then I'd assume the problem is with your reloads. The fact that a factory round would not chamber before the cleaning tells me maybe the owner did not clean the chamber/throat as well as he thought. Could be bullet profile too. Iffin the bullet profiile diameter is over .3580 @ 1.3986 from the base of the rim, this could be the issue. The fact that every gun is an entity in itself, is why we as reloaders load for individual firearms. Factory ammo tends to compensate for the small irregularities/variances in the manufacture of firearms and tend to adjust ammo to make sure it fits all of them. This is why they tend to stick to bullet profiles that work in every gun.

See the attachment.......

 

[Ifishsum]

Certainly could be bullet length is jamming in the rifling but there's also a good chance it just needs more cleaning. It can take quite a bit of scrubbing to completely get rid of that carbon ring. Blackening one of your rounds with soot or a sharpie and then trying to chamber should give you a clue to the tight spot. It may even be your dies aren't quite resizing far enough down on the base to fit that particular chamber.

 

[buck460XVR]

It may even be your dies aren't quite resizing far enough down on the base to fit that particular chamber.

Dies wouldn't be the problem there, it would be his adjustment of those dies. Iffin one looks at the profile of those Badman bullets, you'll see the ogive is tangent and very short. So even if OAL is correct, it may be the leading edge of where the major diameter of the bullet begins, that is the issue. Could be the Henry has a tighter throat than the OP's Winchester.