[Dulvarian]

Picked up my little Beretta Neos today and the FFL I used was a gunsmith. He had a nice little shop and I picked his brain for a while on a few subjects and we got to talking about reloading.

He told me a story about a friend of his that had been shooting reloads out of a Glock .45 (didn't get the model). Anywho, he pointed out that reloads were ok to shoot, but not if they had been previously fired from a Glock because the bottom rear portion of the casing gets a little deformed. He said that if I looked, there was a about a 1/8 inch of the lower portion of the shell casing that is unsupported by the barrel. If that lower portion was again unsupported, it could blow out the lower portion of the case.

Sure enough, I looked when I got home, and there is a portion of the case that it is not supported. I don't mean the necked down part at the base (it's late and I don't remember the technical term), I mean the cylindrical portion of the case.

My question, is this true only for Glocks? If it is, I'm fine with still keeping the Glock with the mounted light as a HD gun. Just curious about it though, because I am thinking pretty seriously about getting into reloading, and this would be a major factor. Might be the push that gets me a 1911.

[ljnowell]

He's way off his rocker. I have reloaded 45acp brass 10 times or more from a g21, usually the neck splits before anything else.

[rokchucker]

I reload for my glock 21 45 acp without any problems at all. I primarily use winchester brass, and have no problems with it. My fired rounds don't have a bulge, and resize / reload just fine. I can't say how many times I will be able to reload the brass, as I have only reloaded the same brass about 4 times so far currently. It still looks fine, and shows no serious wear. I am guessing I will likely loose it before it wears out.

Now that I have proven it's fine, let me elaborate a bit. I am very careful in my reloading process, and use ONLY copper jacketed bullets, and medium loads of powder for the application. ie. right now I am using winchester brass, winchester large pistol primers, precision delta 230grain round nose FMJ bullets, and 8 grains of AA#5 powder, which is a fairly middle of the road load.

[Baldy]

I got a G19 and I run all my reloads through a gauge as the final step in reloading them. I have had very few that get rejected for case bulge. I shoot them till they split. I have loaded thousands of them.

[Cajun CB]

The only time I have ever had a problem with reloads in my Glock 19 was when I did not have the last stage taper die (RCBS) set properly.

Take the barrel out of the Glock and see if all of the cartridges drop in without obstruction. If they don't, adjust the die.

[krs]

Go back and ask if he wasn't maybe thinking of .40 S&W instead of .45 acp from a Glock.

Redding has just come out with a die for resizing .40 cal cases that sound like they commonly have the problem that your man has heard of, so maybe he's just mixed up a little.

Tell him he needs to spend his time wasting on internet forums instead of playing with his kids or trying to run a business. :)

[rcmodel]

The 1911 Colt .45 ACP has as much or more unsupported chamber as the Glock.

It is not a problem in that caliber due to the low working pressure of the .45 ACP. (21,000 - 23,000 PSI)

The .40 S&W (35,000 PSI) Glock has been known to bulge cases and even Kaboom them, but thats a different issue entirely.

Bottom line is, your gunsmith is wrong.

rc

[Dulvarian]

Lol, thanks for the comments guys.

And for the record, he isn't actually my smith, just a smith that I happened to use for an FFL transfer and asked him some questions.

And the 40 vs 45 discussion came to mind. He was an older guy and it was a pretty respectful discussion, though I admit I kind of disagreed with him on a few things. Even if they are wrong, I am pretty nice to my elders (as long as I am not at work anyway).

Like he told me there was no difference in 5.56 and .223 as far as what you could shoot them out of. I even brought up the SAAMI ratings and told me there was no difference. Just because I pretty much knew he was wrong on one thing did not mean that he was wrong on others.

For example, he thought cutting up the Mossberg 702 plinkster and throwing it in the trash sounded like a good idea. And he gave me a good price for swapping out the rear sights on my Beretta Cougar for a holosight. I might have him lower the trigger pull on it too.

Again, thanks guys. Hopefully I will be able to pick up supplies and be able to start reloading soon.

[kb2zya]

nooo not the 702.I love that cheep gun:cuss::banghead:

[Steve C]

You don't hear about KB's in 9mm Glocks but there have been lots of them in the .40 s&w since Glock chambered that cartridge. You hear and see KB's in .45 acp Glocks but with less frequency than the .40. The .45 acp will rupture occasionally in barrels that have poor support like Glocks and heavily throated 1911's. There's probably less tendency for this problem in the .45 as it operates at about 1/2 the pressure of the .40 S&W.

[rcmodel]

Like he told me there was no difference in 5.56 and .223 See, that's just how old farts like him and I are.

I've shot GI issue 5.56 in .223's since 1970 without any issues.
And he probably has too.

The SAAMI warning only came about a few years ago.

But for the first 30 years of .223's, we didn't know 5.56 would shoot our eyes out, until the SAAMI lawyers & the Internet finely got around to telling us it was so.

There were some few incidents of blown primers when shooting 5.56 in tight match chambered 40X .223 Rem target rifles years ago. Also some early SAKO's with too tight bores.

Other then that, and what I read about what might happen, I've never seen one instance of it happening though.

And as an old gunsmith, he probably hasn't either!

rc

[rokchucker]

The whole glock 45's kabooming thing gained a lot of traction from the portland police department suspecting the glock 21 itself to be the cause of the malfunctions they experienced, they duked it out with glock for quite some period of time before portland's OWN indepentant lab proved conclusively the problem were caused by double charges of powder.

I think your going to find that most kabooms are faulty ammunition, be it split cases, too much powder etc....

Plenty of guns over time will suffer catastrophic failures, but you have to look at overall numbers, since glock began producing the G17 and then later the G21 and G30, there are literally tens of millions of these pistols out there, compared to many other types of semi autos, statistically you are going to hear about a glock kaboom more than most others.

note: I am neither a glock fanboy, or a glock detractor, just stating the obvious when it comes to the numbers. Glocks are NOT the only handgun out there, but there sure are a lot of them.

[JuryRig]

I have reloaded for the G17, G20, G21, & G30. Never had any problems bulged cases, except with the G20. For 10mm, I bought a Lone Wolf barrel, so I could run up to max loads without worrying about ruining brass.