Steelhead,
I apologize for my original snotty tone. I dumped on you out of misdirected frustration with half- baked allegations on another site. You did not say originally that your point was based on personal experience. I assumed it was more of the second-hand guff I was seeing elsewhere. My mistake.
OK, we have two vastly different experiences. That likely means the rifles, ammo, or the magazines must be different. If one works and one doesn't, there must be an explanation and it might be useful to others. So let's compare them.
My rifle, a brand new VHZ, was "K'ed" in 2000 by ITD, a gunsmith in Minerva, Ohio who converts Big Stick's VHZs. He also set back some excess barrel thread to remove the "slop" from the Ruger original. He did not modify the bolt at all. (Unless there was a major variation on how yours was done, I tend to discpount the rifle as the cause but it might be interesting to make molds of the two chambers and compare them.)
My mags are an original that came with the rifle and a Ruger replacement ordered through Midway. They are unmodified. (I don't know of any 'knock-off' rotary mags in circulation so I doubt this is the cause of your problem.)
I'm prone to suspect that the ammo is at fault as I have seen other rifles that reject one type of round --usually with steep ogives-- and smoothly gobble up another type. My reloads are based on 35 gr. Hornady Vmaxes, sized at 1.735 COAL, out of fireformed Remington cases. They load and feed w/o a hitch and are very fast and accurate.
Ater 37 years, my wife knows more about the bad deal she made than you could have known then. (I wasn't into guns then for example, or quite as crotchety.)
oneb
