Plunk Every Round?

I do for the semi's. I have found the barrels are more forgiving than the gauge, so if they fit the gauge they fit the barrel. Since I use the FCD crimper, I usually only find about 1-2 in 50 that don't easily plop in the gauge. Not sure why I find any though.

You can get the occasional post CFC oddity because it cannot get closer to the casehead than the .125" depth of the shellholder plus the depth of the mouth radius. I think you can also get funny bullets in the usual cheap bulk stuff.

I chamber check every one of my loaded cartridges. As I type this, there are 600 9mm cartridges sitting on my desk to be checked. I generally load 400-600 9mm at a time. Then I use my tightest 9mm barrel for a gauge. That way I know my loaded rounds will run in any of my 9mm guns. Using the barrel, I can check about 100 every 10 minutes. This also gives me an opportunity to do a quick visual check of the primers. My match and practice ammo is the same, I treat it all alike.
str1

9mmepiphany said:

I case gauge every round of my competition ammo. All my competition pistols have after market barrels with tighter chambers.

For the short amount of time it takes, it is a small price compared to the expense of traveling to matches. Pistol rounds go very quickly as I'm using a gauge that does 100 at a time. ..plus then they are all aligned to dump into a MTM 100-round ammo box

Revolver rounds are a bit slower as I'm using the cylinder and only able to do 6 at a time...but I combine it with reload drills (loading with a speedloader) so I'm getting 100 repetitions while gauging 600 rounds

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Great idea gauging revolver rounds using speed loaders! The old two birds thing.

str1

I'm not sure if I'm the only one but I've never plunk tested a single pistol round......The gentlemen that taught me how to reload also made sure that I understood how to set up the dies.....but never mentioned a plunk test. Also, just use published load data from a reputable source....OAL makes a big difference in a semi auto especially. Keep it within spec per the manual and they will work 99% of the time.

So how do you set up your dies?

Dies are set up to produce ammunition that match the dimensions of the SAMMI specs listed in the manual with that specific bullet weight and contour.

Would you care to give us an example (measurements) for a caliber you reload often since SAAMI has minimum and maximum range?

For example... My bulk 9mm load for my XD Mod 2 is a 115 Zero FMJ pushed by 4.7g of universal (slightly under max) with a CCI500 primer in mixed brass with a COL of 1.14"..........The load comes from the label on the can of powder and the OAL info comes from various manuals


What I was taught has only worked for 20 years so far......so I could still be considered a rookie by some.....

Damon555 said:

Dies are set up to produce ammunition that match the dimensions of the SAMMI specs listed in the manual with that specific bullet weight and contour.

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Damon555 said:

For example... My bulk 9mm load for my XD Mod 2 is a 115 Zero FMJ ... COL of 1.14" ... The load comes from the label on the can of powder and the OAL info comes from various manuals

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I am sorry but that's no longer good enough as we now have pistol and barrel manufacturers making barrels with short or no leade/free bore.

Here's actual "specifications" for 9mm from SAAMI - http://saami.org/specifications_and...ownload/Z299-3_ANSI-SAAMI_CFPandR.pdf#page=10



The SAAMI specifications CLEARLY indicate for 9mm FMJ/RN profile projectile OAL/COL with minimum range from 1.000" to maximum 1.169".

While barrels with longer leade and more gradual start angle of rifling may accommodate OAL of 1.169", barrels with shorter or no leade and sharper start angle of rifling will need shorter OAL. The ONLY way we can determine whether a finished round will fully chamber in any barrel is to drop the round in the chamber also known as the "plunk test" and well illustrated by Walkalong in this thread - https://www.thehighroad.org/index.p...rel-find-a-max-o-a-l-with-your-bullet.506678/



Owners of Springfield XD/XDm, Walther PPQ and CZ pistols cannot use the longer OAL that work in other pistols and must use much shorter OAL. My newest Lone Wolf barrel with no leade will not chamber a FMJ/RN loaded to 1.140" (that will chamber in KKM and other Lone Wolf barrel with longer leade) and I must decrease the OAL to shorter than 1.125".

And keep in mind that with mixed range brass, resized case length can vary by several thousandths and different amount of bullet nose will enter the bore when chambered rounds headspace off case mouth (unless the resized case was so short the finished round headspace off extractor). This reloading variable alone can prevent a finished round from fully chambering freely with a "plonk" and due to this, when I conduct my initial max/working OAL determination, I will use the average of resized case lengths and subtract .3"-.5" from working OAL to compensate for resized case length variance.

Jacketed/plated and lead/coated lead bullet manufacturers have also changed the nose profile of 9mm FMJ/RN bullets over the years. Picture below compares more traditional "pointed" nose profile to rounder nose profile of MBC 9mm RN "Small Ball" with shorter nose that increases the bear surface/bullet base length. Using more typical OAL of 1.125" with this bullet will result in nose hitting the start of rifling.



As shown in the comparison picture below, you can see the longer bearing surface of MBC RN next to shorter bearing surface lengths of more traditional pointed RN bullets to the right.



The shorter more rounder MBC RN must be loaded shorter to fully chamber in most barrels (even with longer leade) and now MBC recommends on their website using 1.080" OAL - http://missouribullet.com/details.php?prodId=51&category=5&secondary=8&keywords=

Damon555 said:

My bulk 9mm load for my XD Mod 2 is a 115 Zero FMJ ... COL of 1.14"

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Since you are using Zero FMJ (BTW, they are sized larger at .356"), you will notice in the comparison picture below that Zero 115 gr FMJ has shorter rounder nose profile compared to other 115 gr FMJ.

Due to more pointed nose profile, Speer 115 gr TMJ and Winchester 115 gr FMJ fully chambered in my newest Lone Wolf barrel with no leade at 1.165" OAL. Due to more rounded nose profile, RMR in-house 115/124 gr FMJs fully chambered at 1.125" OAL and Zero 115 gr FMJ fully chambered at 1.120" OAL.

I must be very lucky then......I appreciate the explanation

Pistol no I check in a case gauge when I check my powder drop every 10 rounds or so,

I have several 9mm's and that is the only caliber that has great enough variations for me to plunk test. Not every round, but it seems I must have different OAL depending on the barrel and the bullet (duh). I now tend to seat deeper say 1.08 with mid range charges. I haven't had any pressure issues.

If it is a round to be fired in timed competition it is case gauged before being placed in a box. I can tell you by color of the box, per caliber what rounds are case gauged.

Otherwise they may or may not be. I loaded for 20 years or so and never owned a casegauge. It wasn't until I lost a match to a "mystery" malfunction, that I began every round.

bds said:

I am sorry but that's no longer good enough as we now have pistol and barrel manufacturers making barrels with short or no leade/free bore.
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Owners of Springfield XD/XDm and Walther PPQ cannot use the longer OAL that used to work in other pistols and now must use much shorter OAL.

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Great post. Very well done. But we can't leave out CZ, long famous for short leades. My P-01 determines the COL for all of my 9mm loads.

higgite said:

Great post. Very well done. But we can't leave out CZ, long famous for short leades. My P-01 determines the COL for all of my 9mm loads.

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Thank you.

I updated my post to include CZ pistols.

Each time I install my dies in my press (currently RCBS Turret) I will check the first few and then when inspecting/boxing them check a random one every so often. So far this approach has worked OK for me. I also use the tightest fit barrel to plunk with and all the others will do OK. In the future IF I should have a problem I will modify what I do as needed but for 30+ years all has been well as currently done. YMMV