Better inspection needed.

P

Prof Young

New member
Was shooting reloaded 9mm plated bullets thru the Sig 365 today and twice the gun did not go all the way back in to battery after firing and refeeding. Both times the cause was a bullet that had a sliver of the plating peeled up and laying on the outside of the brass. Makes the bullet too fat to feed. Anyway, I must have missed those in the final inspection or I didn't think they'd matter. Wong. Life is good.
Prof Young
 
Ditto for me ,copper plated bullets in a 38 Super1911.
Its dead soft pure copper. Thats way different than the much harder guilding metal jacket

In my case,the copper buildup effectively increased the length of the case over the case mouth, so there was interference with my chamber headspace.

Don't feel like the Lone Ranger!! The University of Murphy's Law gives a well rounded education...eventually!

As the Quality Dude J Edwards Deming taught (and I am sure you are aware)
Quality assurance in setting up the process is a good thing. Inspect to make sure you start out making good ones.

Ideally,once you find that setup,you have means to repeat it.

Feed in 100% good components, eliminate variation from the process,and you get 100% good ammo.

Do use in process inspection to monitor any variation.

Inspecting quality back in,after the fact...inspecting,sorting,rework...:( present an excellent opportunity to improve the process! (A little more bell)

And now you have progressed!!
 
Last edited:
If the cases have ever been chamfered, that creates an edge that is more than capable of scraping copper off even a jacketed bullet. There are several ways to dull that, but the simplest is to apply a little inside neck lube and run the case into an expander a couple of times. Also, using the Lyman M-die or Multi-expander (for powder-through) die profiles makes sure the brass at the case mouth is clear of the bullet and prevents that issue.
 
I had a new experience yesterday. I usually shoot 125gr JHP in my .38 Special or .357 Mag but I had a bunch of Nosler 158gr and I loaded 36 rounds. I followed my usual techniques, ending with crimping the bullets. At the range, not one of the rounds would slide into the cylinder- all were stopped about halfway. (I didn't "test" them beforehand because the process used was no different than that used with 125gr).

I took one round apart, removed the primer punch from the die, and resized the case. It fell right into the cylinder. These were all new cases, never fired; why would I have to resize them? Then I looked at the crimp with a magnifier. It wasn't particularly rounded into the cannelure. I recrimped one round, making the crimp an obvious tight crimp. It fell right into the cylinder! I recrimped the rest and solved the problem.

In retrospect, I had used the spacer supplied with the dies with the longer .357 case but the crimp had been set for the shorter .38 Specials, and it just wasn't enough for the longer mag cases. There's something to be learned every day in this hobby.
 
If resizing fixed one, you were discovering what the Lee Carbide Factory Crimp Die does. That issue is usually caused by over-crimping. A die set up for the shorter 38 Special would be expected to try to over-crimp the longer .357 case because it encounters the die shoulder sooner during the press upstroke.

The problem from the over-crimp is it rolls the shoulder so sharply into the bullet that the case below it is expanded outward, as shown in third image on the right, below.

attachment.php
 
Is that the case even though you used the spacer in the die when seating and crimping (in one step) in the .357?
 
Rereading, I think I misunderstood. Were you saying the flare for bullet seating was still in the case and preventing seating? If so, an increase in the crimp would correct it.

The spacer only compensates perfectly if the difference in your 38 and 357 case lengths matches the spacer thickness exactly. If the difference is less, then the 357 will need the die turned in more to crimp than the 38 does. If the difference is longer than the thickness of the spacer, then the 357 will need the die turned out more than the 38 to prevent the over-crimping in my illustration from occurring when you move from 38 to 357.
 
That comes from bullets tilting during seating.
A better (non Lee) seating die will prevent that without increasing the flare.
 
The OP is about 9mm ammo and failure to fully go into battery,probably due to the case moth scraping brass.

9 mm ,if crimped,would be crimped with a taper crimp die to a diameter.

Prof Young wrote the first post.

Now cdoc has interjected roll crimping problems with a 357.

Different topic,different answers,and rather confusing.

cdoc,Why don't you just start a new thread?
 
Both times the cause was a bullet that had a sliver of the plating peeled up and laying on the outside of the brass.
Click to expand...

A little more flare on the case mouth and paying more attention when seating will fix the shaving problem.

so will the method I use, which is simply not to use plated bullets. Cast lead or jacketed always worked for me. :D
 
A touch off track but . . .

Yeah, this thread has wandered a bit from the original query . . . but I gotta tell ya, I have learned a lot from it.

Thanks to all.

Life is good.
Prof Young
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top