Inserting stuck quill stem

I've just tried to put a new 1" quill stem but it's getting stuck halfway in the HT.
I thought there might be a chance I'd got the wrong size as it's a bmx stem but it was advertised as 1" not 21.1. I then tried to get the other stem back in which came out with relative ease, and the same is happening with this. There's nothing that I can see that would obscure it, the HT is long enough. I've taken out the stopper on both of them and neither of them go all the way down.
I've loosened off the headset too.
How annoying.
Any ideas genius people?

put a handlebar on it, and the wheel back on again.

use handlebar as leverage to take off the stem?

I need to get it in Ed!
Yeah, it's all together, put my weight on it, won't budge.
Will be taking a hammer to it tomorrow.

grease? freeze the stem?

Get one that fits

Well lubed and the old one wouldn't go back in either.

This sounds like a pretty mystifying problem, if you want to test out a few other one inch stems I have a few knocking about in camberwell you can try. Do the stems fit in other bikes/have you tried fitting them in a different frame?

TBH sounds like something is bent.

can you clean the inside of the steerer and the quill stem and then insert till friction is met and look for contact points.

so marker or engineers blue could help identify the contact points. might not help to much as i know they are a nice snug fit so it may not be easy to see.

the other option is try another fork for fitment.

Well lubed and the old one wouldn't go back in either.

TBH sounds like something is bent.

A double Williams, fairly rare.

This thread.

Sounds like it could be jamming on a butted section, as sheldon's picture shows.

Butted Section

Sounds odd. Pull the fork out the frame, see what you can see.

I think Alfie has hit the nail on the head. It's a 52cm frame so slightly smaller than average.
This looks like where it's getting stuck.

Getting new forks.

but new forks will have the same restriction at the base.

if the quill is bottoming out then that is as low as you can go with that stem. new stem needed with a shorter quill part.

I though if I got a non lugged one it won't have a butted section.
The Stem isn't that long.

if you are careful, it's not very hard to cut an inch or so off the bottom of a stem. Mark it up very carfeully though, as the angle is critical!