No not normal for any AR barrel , but inspecting them inside & out before they are installed is . You can have all sorts of machining shavings & oil in them . You never know . Just like having machining chips in detent holes of lower receivers, it happens , a lot .
The barrel assembly is very easy to inspect , before its installed on the upper receiver & you get what you pay for & in the case of BHW barrels , you get extra's & at a high price .
As far as returning it , that your call , maybe you don't want it any longer , that's fine . You say its a tight barrel or chamber , well its not a factory built rifle with matched factory components & if its tight , as I have said , its probably the NIB bolt causing it & will break in with a round count of fired rounds shot through it .
You have not done the proper procedure for barrel mounting , Head Spacing , so there is no way you can say this barrel is out of spec's , just the way it is . I have also said that NIB coated bolts show some tight head spacing tolerances , because of there coating , depends on the manufacturer or NIB coater .
I normally head space my barrels when they are out of the receiver , because I know I'm checking with out the weight or spring pressure on the HS gage , make them last longer . It doesn't take much to skew up a HS gage & is why I would never use a HS gage set that went around the world as a group tool .
Here is a 308 NIB bolt & head space gage in barrel .