Resizing issue. Need help

LC 6.5 Shooter

Apollo 6 Creed
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Minuteman
May 29, 2018
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League City, TX
So quick story ive been reloading for a couple years now. So have a pretty good understanding of everything.

However I just recently rebarreled from 6xc back to 6.5cm on my rifle.

The barrel before the XC was also a 6.5cm. The 6.5’s have beem chambered by two different smiths. On this second barrel a fired case is 1.5315” with a hornady D400 head space comparator. The old barrel fired case was about 1.533” on the same tool.

With this barrel I started with factory berger 140 hybrids to try them and get the lapua. I had 200 pieces of lapua from the old barrel as well. After firing the new lapua/berger I measured the 1.5315” fired case. So when resizing them I set the shoulder back to 1.529”. I took the old 200 pieces and resized them again to the new shoulder bump. However when I loaded them (old brass but resized) at the range they were extremely hard to load. So I figured maybe I didn’t really set the shoulder back far enough on the old lapua. Got home remeasured and they were 1.529”. To I tried a few unloaded pieces in my rifle. Same thing still extremely hard to chamber and lock down bolt. When I ejected the case there is a wear ring at the the case head area. So I got my die out lubed it and resized it. Re chambered and still hard to close the bolt. So I’m guessing for some reason the old brass is not getting sized at the case base/head for some reason and its too wide causing it to be tight.

Has anyone seen this and have any suggestions. The new brass fired in this rifle has no issues after resizing.
 
Quick update I just measured the head of a current new lapua case I got from the factory bergers 2nd firing it measures .469”. The old brass (resized but unfired) measures .471”. So wider resized and unfired vs a fired case.
 
Small base die

This or get new brass. Essentially, different chambers means different sized brass. Your old chamber was slightly larger than the new (hence the .471 vs .469). Your resizing die doesn't quite go down enough to get to .469 + any springback. This means you're jamming slightly larger brass into your chamber and it fights back a little.

A small base die takes brass down to the minimum tolerance for the case (or maybe smaller), ensuring the case will pretty much fit into any chamber.

EDIT: any chamber of the same caliber
 

@LawnMM Perfect thank you. So once you use this one time on the old larger brass it is good to just use the redding type s after that? Or do I have to use the small base die every time. Is the small base die a 2 step process meaning use the small base die first to do the body/head case first then use the redding type S die to bump the shoulder and size the case neck?