fact or myth?

H

HighValleyRanch

New member
A friend was over yesterday, talking about firearms. He's been shooting for 14 years, but only recently got his CCW. I made a holster for his new Sig 365.
As he was reloading his glock I noticed that he manually loaded the first round into the chamber instead of from a magazine.
So I said that was an unusual practice.

So, is this bad, and if so, why?

Second, I noticed that he used the same round he had ejected to reload into the chamber. I expained to him about bullet setback and higher pressures, but this led me to wonder if this is overblown.

If setback does happen on loading the round by manually letting the slide slam forward, then would it be true that every round loaded when gun recycles has setback also? Which then made me wonder if ammunition manufacturers take this higher pressure from setback into account in their loadings.
Or is it just a overblown myth?

I imagine that setback is caused by the nose of the bullet hitting the loading ramp? Therefore the design of the pistol might differ to the amount of setback, if any, as well as the bullet design. He had terrible problems with the R.I.P. bullets in his glock as they would not load with the radical cuts. So I imagine that the bullet design would affect seback?
 
The extractor is designed to feed from the magazine, the groove of the rim slipping into the extractor. The practice of dropping a round in can cause accelerated wear or damage to the extractor.

As far as bullet setback. It is a real issue, but so it damaging the primer from repeated chamberings. It varies from gun to gun and ammo to ammo. Many people rotate ammo thru so the same round does not see repeated chamberings. I also do not believe in unloading/ loading my pistol for storage etc.
 
So, is this bad, and if so, why?
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The only reason is because the round may not be fully chambered with extractor in proper place. It can be done this way; I have done it this way, but find it easier and more reliable to feed one from the magazine.
 
Thanks, I know that is the theory. But the extractor is spring loaded so how can it really be damaged by wear with the limited amount of times that would happen? My friend is auto mechanic by trade and when I put that time worn theory out, he laughed at the idea.

Second, how can the primer be damaged by loading. If the primer were in contact with anything during the loading process, I would think that would lead to he possibility of ND.

I had to laugh to myself as I expained all this to him, because his technique of manually loading the round into the chamber would prevent the setback problem!
And really how hard is it to replace the extractor or spring in a glock?

Sometime when you hear yourself repeating the time worn facts/myths, you start to wonder about them.

The glock was unloaded for takedown.

In the end, I told him I thought it was a poor practice because one should have a consistent method of loading, and that some pistols would be hard to load that way, showing him my Sig 230 with its tiny ejection port. The he picked up his new Sig 365 and saw that it would be hard to load manually into that as well.
 
I imagine that setback is caused by the nose of the bullet hitting the loading ramp?
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Correct. Dropping the round in the chamber and letting the slide go home on it should not cause setback.

Or is it just a overblown myth?
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Probably mostly overblown, but not a myth. Appreciable bullet setback, i.e. enough to significantly raise pressure, should not happen with one chambering of the bullet. It CAN become a problem with carry ammo, if you repeatedly clear and reload a firearm with the same bullet. Repeated chamberings can add significantly to bullet setback. Add to that, most carry ammo is HP self defense ammo, which already does not feed quite as smoothly as ball ammo. This is one of the greatest arguments, for me at least, of firing off your duty ammo every so often (yearly for me). Possibly even more frequently if you repeatedly clear and reload your firearm with the same ammo for whatever reason.

The extractor is designed to feed from the magazine, the groove of the rim slipping into the extractor. The practice of dropping a round in can cause accelerated wear or damage to the extractor.
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This right here is accurate. Most semi-auto pistols are designed as a controlled feed, and should always be chambered from the magazine. Some designs may be more friendly to slamming the slide home on a round dropped in the chamber, but it is still not how it was designed to be fed.
 
Thanks, I know that is the theory. But the extractor is spring loaded so how can it really be damaged by wear with the limited amount of times that would happen?
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To answer this, at least somewhat, if the nose of the extractor isn't rounded or beveled being spring loaded doesn't matter. If the nose of the extractor is a flat wall, and hitting the rim of the brass is a fore/aft chore when the spring only allows for lateral (side to side) movement. Most extractors do not have a flat nose, but is in fact beveled. This still places more impact stress on the extractor than it would had the round been fed from the magazine. If that makes sense.
 
Primers can be impacted by floating firing pins when the slide/bolt is dropped. Repeated impacts can set the cartridge off. (Primarily an issue in the AR world.)

Bullet setback is real.
It can be caused by the bullet impacting another part of the firearm during chambering (magazine, feed ramp, chamber sides, etc.) or from the cartridge getting smacked in the rear by a slide/bolt being dropped on it. Rarely, bullet setback is seen from rounds sitting in a constantly-topped-off magazine that only has a few rounds fired out of it at a time. (Fire two rounds, top the magazine off, put it away for a month. Lather, rinse, repeat for a few years.)


In some firearms, I rotate the cartridges through the magazine, so that no single cartridge gets much of a chance to encounter setback before I fire all of them.
In others, I'll chamber a round manually, "ride the slide", and carefully snap the extractor over the rim.

If I encounter a round showing setback, I'll judge the severity and either: A) Fire it to get rid of it. Or, B) Use a bullet pullet to knock the bullet back out to a safer overall length, and then fire it.
(Option C, rarely used: I disassemble the cartridge, toss the powder, and reuse the bullet, case, and primer in whatever way seems best. [Ranging from scrapping/recycling to reloading in some other form.])


In rare instances, bullet creep can also be seen. --The bullet moving out of the cartridge, rather that deeper into it, from the sudden stop when being chambered with force (or just by being chambered in a revolver and having recoil 'pull' the bullets as other cartridges are fired). It generally isn't as dangerous, but is always less than ideal (especially when it locks up a revolver). When I encounter creep, I address it the same as setback - just in the opposite direction, if needed.
 
One of the few exceptions to the rule that you should NOT hand-chambera round is that the Beretta 92 guns (and the Military M9) CAN be chambered that way, without damaging the extractor. It's a design feature that Beretta mentions in their advertising.

Some extractors will be weakened or damaged if the extractor is pushed OVER a chambered case's rim.
 
Anyone who doubts that you'll see bullet setback with repeated chambering of the same round needs only to have a dial or digital caliper handy and you WILL see it. And increased pressure from shortened COAL is an absolute guaranteed, no myth whatsoever, it's simple physics.

And snapping an extractor over an already chambered round is most definitely outside the design function of the pistol.

The best answer to this situation remains the same as it's always been -- for a perpetually used carry gun, stop unloading and reloading this handgun. Secure the pistol when it's carry or immediate access isn't needed, but the constant unloading and reloading isn't only damaging the ammo, it is excessive administrative handling of a loaded firearm which is also a practice to be avoided for obvious reasons. A loaded handgun should be holstered, not handled.

Another benefit of loading it and leaving it loaded is that you needn't futz around with this television-inspired "press check" nonsense because you aren't sure that your pistol is loaded, also a ridiculous practice.
 
Rarely, bullet setback is seen from rounds sitting in a constantly-topped-off magazine that only has a few rounds fired out of it at a time. (Fire two rounds, top the magazine off, put it away for a month. Lather, rinse, repeat for a few years.)
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Please expain. I'm not understanding this statement. If you fire off two round and put in two fresh ones, then how can setback occur? You mean in the existing rounds that have not been fired over a length of time, or the two new fresh ones.
 
Sevens said:
Anyone who doubts that you'll see bullet setback with repeated chambering of the same round needs only to have a dial or digital caliper handy and you WILL see it. And increased pressure from shortened COAL is an absolute guaranteed, no myth whatsoever, it's simple physics.

And snapping an extractor over an already chambered round is most definitely outside the design function of the pistol.

The best answer to this situation remains the same as it's always been -- for a perpetually used carry gun, stop unloading and reloading this handgun. Secure the pistol when it's carry or immediate access isn't needed, but the constant unloading and reloading isn't only damaging the ammo, it is excessive administrative handling of a loaded firearm which is also a practice to be avoided for obvious reasons. A loaded handgun should be holstered, not handled.

Another benefit of loading it and leaving it loaded is that you needn't futz around with this television-inspired "press check" nonsense because you aren't sure that your pistol is loaded, also a ridiculous practice.
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Well said Sevens. And when training, I never load a full load into the magazine. No need for it, and less pressure on the mag springs. Rotate my Carry ammo on a regular basis. One, I want to shoot it, to make sure I know how it feels and shoot and keep that into memory. Two, just a good Idea as you say.
 
I don't like the idea of rotating rounds as then every round gets beat up. I inspect the top round before chambering and once I see the case has been beat up to a point by the extraction and chambering process then I put it in a box to be shot off and move to the next round.

Ideally you wouldn't unchamber a round. I do so in order to get in some dry fire practice. I don't manually drop rounds into the chamber for the reasons mentioned above.

Sent from my Pixel 2 using Tapatalk
 
I've had to replace broken extractors in a CZ 75. I didn't chamber them manually, always from the mag. These were older guns.

First thing the smith asked was whether I had chambered from the port instead.
 
Broken extractors are more of a problem with the "internal" type, like you see on the 1911's.

This one was in my sons Colt, when his buddy loaded one in the chamber and dropped the slide on it. It snapped the "hook" off, and the gun was DRT as far as function goes.

If you look close on the right side, you can see the hook is missing....

enhance


With the internal type, you should be loading from the mag, as the extractor has nowhere to go when you drop the slide on a round in the chamber.

The spring-loaded external type are more forgiving of it.
 
Looks like the glock has an angled extractor which allows it to go around the case rim.
I used a dummy round and manually loaded it five times, and each time it closed fine.
You would be able to see if the extractor did not go around the rim, as the breach would not be fully closed IMHO.
I'm not advocating loading manually, but trying to see if it's that big a deal.

Isn't clearing a type 3 malfunction the same?
You have a case stuck in the chamber with a round trying to feed in. You drop the mag, clear the feeding round and then rack the slide three times to try and pick up the stuck case. It's having to go around the rim case to do that. So it seems the same function.
 
Please expain. I'm not understanding this statement. If you fire off two round and put in two fresh ones, then how can setback occur? You mean in the existing rounds that have not been fired over a length of time, or the two new fresh ones.
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The cartridges that remain in the magazine get battered by recoil over time and can suffer bullet setback.
 
Yep, it's easier on the extractor if you feed from the magazine. That said, I've broken exactly one extractor on a 1911 pistol in over 50 yrs of shooting them, and that was while feeding from the magazine. In truth, I can't ever remember dropping one in the chamber and allowing the slide to ride over the extractor....must have been a cpl there along the way though.

As to setback...it doesn't pay to repeatedly re-chamber the top round in a magazine. Most commercial rounds will withstand setback for a number of re-chamberings, but why tempt fate? NRA recommends that you test handloads for neck tension by pressing against a solid surface with a minimum of 40 lbs. pressure. A practice I've adopted over the years, and have never seen set back in any of my handloads.

One commercial SD round had problems with setback in my guns. Hornady's .45 ACP 185 gr FTX Critical Defense rounds that I bought a cpl years ago, would setback on the first or 2nd chambering...I re-crimped them in my dies using a taper crimper and had no further problems....Hornady may have had a one-off lot of bad ammunition then...but it didn't leave me with a good feeling, and I haven't used them since in any of my guns.

YMMV, Rod
 
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Until I started reading the forums, I never gave any thought to just dropping one into the chamber and letting it go into battery.

Now if I can remember, I load the mag with 1 round, insert and load the chamber.
Then I proceed to load the rest of the mag. This keeps me from having to load the last round twice.
 
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