Great information! Thank you all very much!
It wasn't just the handloads that were exhibiting this phenomenon. Several brands of standard velocity commercial 115 and 124 grain ammo were doing this also. I also suspected that insufficient taper crimp might be at fault, but careful inspection and measurement with vernier calipers established that there were no dimensional differences in this area between my handloads and commercial ammo.
So, it appears that I have compromised (not completely removed as yet) a factory "feature". Given the way I did it, I don't think I narrowed the chamber dimension at the end of the case. In order to prevent screwing up the headspacing, I mounted the 220 grit wet-or-dry on the dowel a bit back from the end, which was too large to pass into the throat. I also kept the whole arrangement moving a bit in and out. So I am guessing I partially turned the step into a taper, or maybe just took the hard edge off of it. I have to believe that polishing the chamber helped also.
At any rate, the cases are not coming out any dirtier than they were before, and the gun feeds a lot better, both with handloads and commercial loads.
Still, it's good to know that the issue wasn't being caused by crap machining, and I thank you guys again for the information.
The next step is checking the mainspring against replacements from Wolff to see if that makes any difference. The spring set from them is literally "in the mail".
I won't do any more after that, as the reliability as it is now is acceptable for a range-only gun, especially one that old.
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