What are the symptoms of a undercharge?

Not cycling the action, squibb, or FTF/FTE. Worst case a kaboom due to explosion in the case instead of ignition.
 
Depends on the gun.
As T and Tsq say, an undercharge is an underload and performance will be weak.

I have seen light loads, as for cast bullets in bottleneck rifle rounds, to cause primer protrusion leading to fear of excess chamber headspace. It isn't and the usual recommendation is to use that brass with its set-back shoulder only for the same sort of reduced load.
 
Hounddawg,

Look for the primer sticking out and a lot of soot from the case mouth backward because pressure was inadequate to get the brass to expand hard enough to seal off the chamber.

If you got sticky bolt lift and the primer was flat but not sticking out proud of the case head, then you had high pressure. The reason would require load information to diagnose.
 
thanks for the replies guys but I found the problem.

For the curious it was excess firing pin protrusion, damn if I can explain how it got that way though. It is a pain to adjust back and I have no idea how it could have crept out of adjustment. The last time I had that bolt disassembled was 3 years ago so it has been that way for a while. Also been shooting the same load and recently started getting some primer cratering. The clue I missed though was the cratering without flattening. This morning one pierced, luckily no damage to me or gun. I noticed it as I was putting the case in the box and cut my trip to the range short. Firing pin did not look damaged to the naked eye but I am ordering a new one anyway and putting that gun in the safe for a while
 
Glad you found it. That may solve the protrusion issue, too. If it doesn't, then you may have some metal battered in the bolt, and it may become necessary to bore out the firing pin tunnel and sleeve it. Hope not.
 
it's a Savage/Stevens action. When I turned it into a .204 I had to replace the bolt face so it could have been off then and and I forgot to check it. It's not that hard to strip the bolt down, but it is a tedious and painstaking job and lots of little springs and teensy parts. I keep a couple of spares of the smaller stuff such as ejectors and extractors just in case I drop something and cant find it. My hats off to pro gunsmiths who have to deal with those little buggers daily
 
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Bullet trickles out the end of the barrel and drops on the ground in front of your bench?? Sorry. Couldn't resist. I chrony test every load and gram scale every round.
 
I chrony test every load and gram scale every round.[
Click to expand...

The chrony data for this load disappeared about 2 years ago with a trashed laptop but I found an old post I had made on another forum about the load so I started using it again and it shot 1/2 to 3/8 ths 5 shot groups but started. But the cratering seemed to get worse, then I had 2 primer penetrations.

My first and prime suspect was a mechanical issue, I have put close to 2K rounds through it in 3 years. It was off a bit, not much but could be the culprit. Since I made this post I tore down the bolt and soaked it in carb cleaner and double checked the protrusion. I am going to do a load workup on it tomorrow with a different bullet and powder, if the cratering continues I plan on replacing the complete firing pin assembly or just taking it to a real gunsmith. If this cures it I will do a whole new workup on the other powder and bullet

I normally don't chrony every load when I do a workup, just the ones I want to repeat and want to run ballistic charts on. That would not even be necessary with this gun since I only shoot it at 100 - 300 and is so flat shooting. I have no plans on ringing the steel at long range with this gun, the ballistics just suck past 350.

Exceptions do occur on the chrony use like when I am attempting to lower my SD's by tweaking a reloading technique for example
 
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