Well DARN!

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Captain Quack

Captain Quack

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I just came back from the range for the first time in about 7 years and most of my 9mm wouldn't feed in either 9. I screwed up somewhere. Probably OAL. Talk about feeling stoopid. I never tested them to see if they would feed. Someone got cocky and careless. I've got about 175 to deal with. Do I have to take them all apart with my manual bullet puller or can I re seat them? Almost all of them went through a factory crimp die.

Good thing was the ones that fired I had 100% hit rate on torso sized steel at 15 yards. I sure as heck didn't expect that!

The Stoopid Captain Quack.
 
First thing you have to do is figure out what is wrong with them. It may be OAL but it may be something else also. Take one that you know won't fit and coat it from top to bottom with a black sharpy, let it dry, and then put in in the gun again.
Then take it back out and see where the black is rubbed off and you will know where the interference is.
 
Check your OAL and verify that is your issue before you do anything. If it is OAL, I think you will be fine running the seater down until you get the OAL you need. Factory crimp on 9mm should be a taper and not a roll so you should be OK, especially if it is only a small adjustment - especially if these are just plinkers.
 
Record COL, plunk then chrono to see how close to hot you are.
FTF usually means a long COL, or perhaps projectile type. It's doubtful you recorded the data from so long ago.
If it were me I'd get FPS 1st before I seated any deeper. Could be as simple as ramp polishing.
A lot of variables.
 
Captain Quack said:
I just came back from the range for the first time in about 7 years and most of my 9mm wouldn't feed in either 9. I screwed up somewhere. Probably OAL. Talk about feeling stoopid. I never tested them to see if they would feed. Someone got cocky and careless. I've got about 175 to deal with. Do I have to take them all apart with my manual bullet puller or can I re seat them? Almost all of them went through a factory crimp die.

Good thing was the ones that fired I had 100% hit rate on torso sized steel at 15 yards. I sure as heck didn't expect that!

The Stoopid Captain Quack.
Click to expand...
Well, Quack, that’s the nice thing about a taper crimp versus a roll crimp: you can push a bullet deeper and not mess it up. I would probably run it back through the FCD after reseating though.
 
I might come at this from a different direction. Most of the feeding issue I've encountered have been with light bullets (115gr) seated to a short col. Hollow points have been worse but it has also happened with round nose ball.
 
Welcome to THR!
I’m a C&H fan too.
A little more information could help a lot regarding the FTF and your reloads. What kind of FTF (hope you meant failure to feed), and some info on your reloading practice would help. Do you record your reloading session and have you changed anything from when things “worked”? Usually, when this happens, something changed that can be attributed to the problem.
 
If your problem is OAL.....and you are loading hot, running them through your seater die again may bump your pressures higher than you want. Just something to be aware of. If you don't have a case gauge (and situations like this are a case study in why you should have a case gauge;)), pull down one of your pistols and use the barrel to plunk the rounds and verify your issue.
 
I just spent a hour on the living room floor going through each different type of load in the 2 boxes and tested the feed on both pistols. This all happened with five different bullet types in two pistols. Big Ruger P95 DC that had been reliable for years when we were still shooting and a small Ruger Max 9 that I just bought for CCW. They fed further into the 95. Some would feed some of some batches of the same bullet but none of other batches. Hollow points fed the best but not reliably. Nothing fed in the Max 9. I went though with the meter and double checked the OAL against the manual I used. Speer 13. They were all within 0.0* As for my old habits I will admit to not being very detailed. Just a note in the box with bullet weight and power load and these were boxes of mixed bullets. last 9mm I had loaded up 5+ years ago. No chronograph. Range is 16 miles each way on gravel roads. I did have one load that worked fine in both pistols but of course those were by chance the first ones I grabbed and I shot them all so I can't see what the difference was. Sharpie test in the Max 9 showed a line about 1/3 of the way down the case. I'm beginning to wonder if it's a 9mm short. I reseated two of each of the no feed rds down to 1.00 and still had trouble feeding in the 95. Did that with both factory mags and 1 after market mag. None of those would feed in the M9 either but they appear to have gone a bit further in.

I am befuddled and confused.

Captain Quack.
 
Wow, 1.00. Something is up. Are the bullets oddly sized. A picture of the bullet may help.

Hum read your first post again. You said most went through fcdie. Something is definitely up. When I run through fcd it barely touches at all. I don't use it to crimp just occasionally check for size every once in awhile.
 
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Captain Quack said:
I just came back from the range for the first time in about 7 years and most of my 9mm wouldn't feed in either 9. I screwed up somewhere. Probably OAL. Talk about feeling stoopid. I never tested them to see if they would feed. Someone got cocky and careless. I've got about 175 to deal with. Do I have to take them all apart with my manual bullet puller or can I re seat them? Almost all of them went through a factory crimp die.
.
Click to expand...


You should be able to put them through the seating dies again and be alright provided you only need to seat a little deeper, and of course assuming this is your problem.

The better method would be to start over. Start with a dummy round with your projectile of choice. Size the brass and make sure it fits the chamber or chambers if you are doing multiple pistols. Insert projectile and see if it passes plunk test on all firearms. I usually start long and go down by .005 at a time. That way I have the longest COAL that will fit both or all pistols I am working with. Once you have COAL you can work on charge weight. When you get close to where you want to be with charge weight you can tweak COAL in .005 or so to see if it makes any difference in accuracy or pressure. You should be able to get something usable for paper target practice using these methods. You really need to do one step at a time when starting with new projectiles.

-Jeff
 
2 things to do before a whackamole marathon starts... check OAL as you suspect. That’s a good place to start. Second is to check the mouth of the case. Occasionally I see (usually on range pickup) heavily crimped brass that has damage on the mouth. I suspect some people manage to crimp so hard as to deform the necks and cause friction fit. If the neck is the problem then you just need to pull the decap stem and give them a bump in the sizing die. If it’s OAL then your going to be shoving them deeper in the case. That’s problematic on some things but 9mm should be no issue. Bottlenecks crush at the neck, and revolver cartridges (generally thinner at the mouth) crack, but 9mm being tapered and a bit thicker walled should just shove on down.

On the shoving down thought though, that will increase pressure. If it’s even a load close to max then be very careful. You don’t want to spike pressure and kaboom the reciprocating high speed freedom object dispenser.
 
Just for giggles, I just went out and mic'd the crimps on a bunch of factory FMJ I have:


1. Winchester white box - .379
2. UMC - .382
3. Federal - .380
4. Amerian Eagle - .381

and then I dragged out:

1. Rem Golden Sabre - .382
2. Fed HST - .381
3. Fed Hydra Shok - .381
4. Win Ranger T - .380

I was taught to mic the thickness of the brass right at the mouth, times that by 2, add in the mic reading for the bullet. So, if you have a .355 bullet and your case wall is .011 then we'll have something in the range of .377. Anymore, I just take the flare out and usually end up with .380.
 
Sounds like you still have some flare in the brass. A gentle nudge in the sizing die or crimper should fix that. If they are heavily crimped already then I would try to sizer, but if the crimp isn’t visually heavy then I would crimp a bit more.

are you seating and crimping in the same stroke?
 
I decided to get radical and pull the hollow point rounds and try them from scratch. As the cases are all primed and we know about the primer situation I tried to pull the decap pin from the sizer die and wouldn't you know it. Seized tight. Soaking in WD 40 as we speak. I'm starting to wonder if this is the reloading gods trying to tell me something.

Captain Quack.
 
Just remember that the 9mm is a tapered case. Once you go a certain distance it starts to expand the case in the mid section.

Time to make up a dummy round or 2 to find the max OAL and proper crimp. Use you calipers and measure about 1/16-1/18 below for a reference then the mouth. You only need to remove what expanding you did to set the bullet + 0.001"-0.002" more.
 
As stated before a chamber checker is a handy little device. I used to shoot USPSA and the chamber checker is your friend, pretty much if it will fit the chamber checker it will fit your gun.
 
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