Here is a copy of the post I made over a year ago about my .350 Rem Mag barrel:
"I finally fired a few rounds (factory 200 gr) through my new 350 Rem Mag Encore Custom Shop Barrel. There are a few things that bother me about the fired brass and I wanted to get some opinions on whether there is a problem and if I should send the barrel back.
First, in front of the belt at the Pressure Ring the case is pretty shiny. It also measures an expansion of .008". When I was in Gunsmithing school I think our instructor used a figure of .006" as max. expansion. If it was over that we had to cut and start over. I may be wrong on that figure but I am pretty sure it is right (what we went by in school anyway).
Second, the brass stretched .012" (by measuring a loaded factory round) and a fired brass. Also, by an eyeball measurement it looks to me like .010" of that stretch occurred from the belt to the shoulder. Like I said these were eyeball measurements using my dial caliper as a depth mike but I measure in .0001" for 8 hours a day so I feel pretty confident that these numbers are real close to accurate.
Third, there is almost no way I can come close to the lands even with a 225 Nosler B-Tip and have what I feel to be reasonable case neck grip (say one caliber in the neck). I took a brand new case that I had FL sized and put a B-Tip in and snapped the gun closed and the overall length was 3.310". That seems way to long to me even for T/C (my Custom Shop .250 Savage barrel allows an OAL .050" longer than the Nosler manual with a 100 gr B-Tip and you might as well forget touching the lands on my regular production 22-250 barrel. But, I have found loads that shoot extremely well through them). I did the same as above with a 250 gr Speer in the case with the point of the bullet in the case, and the length from the base of the case to the flat base of the bullet was only 2.475".
So, I guess my questions come down to: Should I send the barrel back and ask T/C to replace it? Could this become dangerous (case head seperation) even if I am very careful not to set the shoulder back? Is there anyway to "fireform" the brass to reduce this body stretch? Like maybe seating some inverted bullets into the lands and firing with a moderate to low end load? (Maybe a dumb idea)"
This topic is in the gunsmithing forum, under "Brass and Chamber Question". As you can see I took some pretty in depth measurements of the brass. When this barrel came back to me from Fox Ridge without even a note of any kind I wasn't very happy. I was also told that they had to handload the ammo to test fire this gun with. That makes me wonder what they used for a handload. Sean
