englishman, cheers for the comparison in the smoking techniques. I'll have to shop around and see what I can get out in the bush here .

Bindi, yeah silly me I only found out about that perhaps a few hours after I started this process, hence I am asking before going any further.

CINDERS, I have heard of smoking the sights to reduce glare, but never knew what to use, cheers.

smleaddict, you might have just hit the nail on the head: The primer protrusion happened when using these 150gr 'minimum' down-loads (I made them up with the lowest suggested amount of AR2209 powder from the ADI reloaders books), for the fact that with these old guns I want to make sure they won't blow up, so I keep the hot loads well away from them. Only problem is that I thought the phenomenon where the cases grab the chamber and do not butt into the bolt was supposed to happen, hence you don't polish the inside of your chambers and make them slippery. I always thought that the bolt was only meant to take a small part of the force from being discharged as the case bit into the chamber walls rather than slide back. Maybe this just doesn't apply to LE's.

Thanks everyone, this is really helpful stuff.