fifth round, every time

D

DavidAGO

New member
I took out a newbie to pistol shooting this afternoon. he did well, but my Colt .38 super did not. the first few magazines it shot great, then not. the fifth round would not eject the casing. did not matter which of 4 magazines I used, did not matter if I was shooting it slow or rapidly. I could remove the casing and then it would shoot the rest just fine.

when it first happened he was shooting it and I thought he might be limp wristing it, but nope, did it for me.

these were my reloads, same load I have shot for months and months,jacketed round nose. I pulled cartridges from two different batches, no change. In fact, once it started doing this it did it every time, no exceptions. Brass was mixed but there was no correlation there.

Any ideas where to start looking?

David

BTW, this young man was a deer hunter, but new to pistols. We shot my Ruger gp100, S&W .41 magnum, a few different 1911s all in .45 and my CZ75 clone in .40s&w. he loved them all.
 
It extracted the case from the chamber but did not eject it? Was it a stovepipe? What is your load data?

Perhaps the extractor needs to be adjusted. Could be random that it's every 5th round, perhaps not, but it's not obvious why it would consistently be the 5th round every time.
 
Were you only loading 5 per mag? I mean, was the fifth round the last round in the mag?

There are some things that could cause the last round in the mag to fail to eject, but having it consistently fail on round 5 out of 8 (just an example) is pretty bizarre.
 
"...might be limp wristing it...did it for me..." It'd happen with every round and not both of you.
"...not matter which of 4 magazines..." Indicates an odd extractor issue.
"...these were my reloads..." Got any factory ammo to test? Isn't likely the ammo as it'd happen randomly if it were.
 
Failing to eject the last round - fifth of five - could be too little extractor tension; the prior rounds have a live round rising into feed position to help kick the empty out.
My .45 Commander sometimes does this, leaving the spent case to fall out along with the mag during the ensuing reload, but yet to cause any sort of stoppage.

If the problem is that the gun somehow senses which round is the fifth one, when there are more than five in the mag . . . well, that's a magic gun.
 
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