Do You Measure And Plink Test Every Pistol Round?

Once I have an established load, I haven't found the need to plunk test at all. One day I may end up wishing I had, but not so far.

As far as measuring OAL. If it's a load I intend to carry in an auto loader and for defense (woods carry usually), then I check each cartridge. If it's just for range use, I check the first five in a batch, then every 5th or 10th after that.

Revolver cartridges are less of a concern for me. And I've yet to start loading bottle necked rifle cartridges, so have no input there.

I agree once I have the dies set with a load that I know works then I might do spot checking but do not measure or plunk test every round.

Every round that I load gets a plunk test. A final check.

Every round for the semi autos get a plunk. The rounds for the wheel guns plunk when I load the cylinder.

Only for my 45acp and that is because I have a Witness with an extremely tight chamber. If I load a .452" bullet into anything other than an R-P case I have problems. If I size my cast lead down to .451" all runs fine. Gun runs just fine this way and no I am not going to have it altered.

Why? What would be the necessity.? Your machine is set up properly, dies adjusted and locked down,load and go.
I’ll do the set up then check one after each primer reload or so.

Every single one ?

Oh hell no.

Set up the tooling, check the begining of the run, go to production.

peeplwtchr said:

Do You Measure And Plink Test Every Pistol Round?

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Yes and no.

Yes while I am conducting load development for a new bullet and loading test rounds at max working OAL for powder work up. Since the nose profile/ogive can vary by brand and weight, I measure finished rounds to see what the extreme range is for me to compensate. With more consistent bullets, OAL variance is less than .005". With really consistent bullets and pre-resized brass, OAL variance is around .001" - https://www.thehighroad.org/index.p...progressive-press.833604/page-2#post-10779806

But once I finished powder work up and OAL adjusted for best accuracy (Usually shorter than max working OAL), I no longer measure/plunk test every round. I do conduct my normal quality control checks at regular intervals for OAL, taper crimp and plunk test.

For match rounds, every finished rounds got plunked in my match barrels. I had one failure to go into full battery during a match stage (Which I quickly removed by racking the slide) but since never experienced another failure during match due to plunking every finished round.

Absolutely.

Only circumstance I can think of where plunk testing every round is if I had a load that was very close to the lands, like .005 off the lands. I've only had one load work up like that and I ended up abandoning that bullet profile specifically because it was so tight in my chamber. All of my 9, 45 and 380 rounds are at least .010 from the rifiling, so variance of 3-5 thousandths isn't going to get me into trouble. I still spot check every 10th round or so. But once I get my dies set on the turret, I start cranking them out. I did do a run of 9mm with Speer Gold Dot bullets that matches factory velocity and accuracy out of my CZ75, those all got checked with the calipers and any variation over .001 was corrected

I should clarify, I don’t plunk test every round but every round is placed in a Hundo case gauge.

I am loading mixed brass and bulk bullets for IDPA and USPSA where reliability counts.
I gauge 100%. Anything at all sticky goes to practice.
Gauge failures are rare, except the time I tried a different brand of coated bullet that ran large size and some wouldn't even plunk. Those got the Lee CFC treatment to be able to use them at all.

Nope not at all, for the thousands of rounds I load for pistol and the different guns I load for it would take forever. Once I set the dies up properly and have done all the checks I just load them up. I will check OAL and powder about every 40 to 50 rounds, now these are just for range and training ammo.

Hooda Thunkit said:

kmw1954 said:

Only for my 45acp and that is because I have a Witness with an extremely tight chamber. If I load a .452" bullet into anything other than an R-P case I have problems.

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Oh hell no.

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My sentiment exactly.

When I ran into 9mm brass with thicker case wall not fully plunking in my tighter aftermarket barrel, after doing some head scratching, I added brass sorting by headstamp to my quality control checks.

Once I separated out really thick case wall brass, no more issues. And the separated brass? I use them for pulled bullets to shoot in my carbines or barrels with larger chambers for training/drills where utmost accuracy is not necessary. (I also leave these spent cases on the ground)

Every round I shoot in competition passes a case gauge before I box it up, except for mood clip fed revolvers and I dunk all of them in and out of the cylinder before I box them up.

Some things I do not though.

I Shockbottle every round, 100 at a time.. It takes 2 minutes.

I powder check and case gauge everything. No exceptions.
Plus I chrono the first 10 rounds to make sure I'm ballpark FPS.

I have a very low gauging failure rate because I cull the brass before processing.
Here's a partial list of the junk I throw in the dumpster. Maxxtech, MXT, FM, Aguila, Ammoland, ZQI, WMA, Xtream, A USA, SST, GFL and CBC. None of these make it to the press.

I have chamber checkers for nearly every cartridge I load for. Every round I load goes through a chamber checker if I have one. If not it gets plunk tested in a barrel with that chamber. No point in making bad ammo if you have the ability to quickly and easily check it.

I don't either. Only if im using a new to me bullet ill check.

Plunk test every round.
Those that don't pass get a black marker slash on the head and get set aside as fouling rounds.

Chamber check all reloads before I box them.

Commercial ammo gets chamber check when I pull it out of the cabinet to go shoot. Especially for competition. I have seen more than one failure to chamber with commercial ammo to make it worthwhile.

No but I occasionally double check powder weight and cartridge length just for peace of mind.