Cycling round too often making it short

Hello all I discovered today that one of my Georgia arms +p 9mm hollow point cartridges is getting shorter from being cycled in and out of my daily carry Glock 26. The reason it gets cycled in and out is due to regular cleaning, dry fire practice, and target practice with FMJ ammo. Just normal stuff. The other 10 rounds in the mag are around 1.135 in OAL, the one that has been going in and out is at 1.112. Keep in mind this is +p ammo, to me that is scary.

The reason I spotted this is because I just got into reloading and am having trouble with loose bullets so I decided to check my factory rounds that are basically "in use" as SD ammo. What should I do about this? Surely some of you guys regularly remove your SD ammo for target/dry fire practice, do you guys encounter this problem? It seems serious. Thanks for any info.

 

Yes. Cycling the same round will increase the set back and if done enough will/can create an over pressure situation.

I think its more critical with .40 but its very important with every round.

You could pull the lead out to where its suppose to be... or all the way out and discard or just shoot it.. ... I'm not sure if that too much set back or not.

I'm sure some one will chime in with more specifics.

 

I don't cycle my rounds all that often. And when I do, if there is any visible setback, it goes to practice.
.023" setback is enough to matter. I would reprocess it.

 

I try and cycle rounds around in my SD mag often, about every three times I unload it or so. Also check OAL fairly often and if any end up short then I will pull those rounds. Haven't had it happen yet (I usually try and handguide my slide down when chambering my SD ammo) but if and when it does I'd imagine you could just pull the round trying to save the powder charge, resize it without the decapping pin in your die, recharge the round with original powder and the reseat the bullet if it's still proper diameter. I'd wager to say with +p ammo it's a really good idea to pull that one that has shortened over 2 hundredths as I'm sure that could drastically affect pressure. No sense in risking a kaboom during a SD scenario.

 

1. Ride the slide down carefully when you re-chamber the same round over and over.
Don't just let it slam shut on its own.

2. As soon as you buy a box of ammo, mark around the bullet/case joints with a black Sharpie pen.

Then, if the black mark disappears inside the case??
Guess what happened to it?

rc

 

With hot .40S&W SD ammo you are dancing with KaBoom! on any noticeable setback!

 

Why unload the gun so often?

 

Just for practice live and dry fire.

 

Buy or borrow a "kinetic hammer" and put the round in it and tap firmly but not too hard as you don't want to unseat the bullet. After 2-4 hits, use a micrometer to check the overall length (OAL) and see if you have made any progress.

If you do unseat the bullet, just refill with powder, reseat original bullet, and use.

Or just save it for target practice and avoid the extra work.

 

DO NOT ATTEMPT TO PULL THE BULLET BACK OUT TO ITS NORMAL LENGTH!

Once bullet setback has occurred, dump the round.
Stop cycling the same round repeatedly.

The solution to the problem is really quite simple.
Just stop doing what creates it.
Denis

 

Commercial ammunition is so drastically underpowered I don't think it would ever make a difference. It's never made a difference for me. The last time I tested speer gold dot +p it wasn't even at the SAMI spec for standard power.

 

Would slide locking the gun and manually inserting the bullet into the chamber along with riding the slide down slowly solve this problem?

 

What guns would that be??

rc

 

No evidence for this, but I always figured this would cause premature wat on the front side of the extractor, at least with pistols. Keep in mind that when a semi auto pistol loads, the rounds slips up behind the extractor not the extractor popping over the rim like a rifle bolt.

 

In my carry guns, I practice with the same ammo as I carry, thus, fresh rounds generally get chambered only once and very seldom does a chambered round come out till it's empty. That's the beauty of loadin' your own. If I had one factory round that had setback to the point that I felt uncomfortable shooting it, I would just dispose of it, especially if it's 9mm. Goin' thru the bother of pullin' the bullet and recycling the components would depend on how ambitious and how cheap I felt at the time of disposal.

 

Its very easy to have a Kahr fail to feed the top round if you ride the side at all. I'd not be surprised if there are others, but Kahr is the one where I've experienced it in practice.

 

For my Sig 229 extraction becomes unreliable with this method of chambering. I've also had problems with extraction when manually putting a round in the chamber, then releasing the slide from full lock. Extraction with a normally chanbered round is fine.

If you're going to try this method, test your gun to insure it will reliably extract.

2KYDS

 

Another reason why i use JHP ammo that costs less than $20/50. I just shoot the mag full of hollow points at every range session.

 

Unless your firearm will only function reliably with +P, there's very little incremental improvement in using it. It's just not that big an increase for the money.

Choosing ammo that is crimped for auto loaders solves the issue - it's military spec and never a problem for them. Crimped ammo means the mouth of the case is reduced to set into a cannelure on the bullet, and that prevents any setback at all.

Unloading, etc, does have to happen, so does periodically shooting that magazine to see that it functions, and as familiarization to that specific rounds recoil. All too many shoot a cheap underpowered load in practice - which sets them up for a different experience than shooting their carry load. In that regard, reloading your brass and making it to nearly the same pressure, etc reduces the cost of practice and raises your experience level. You shoot more cause it's cheaper and more readily available. Reloading makes you a better shooter all around.

Cycling the once ejected rounds into another magazine for range use minimizes the setback and loads the ones you were going to shoot anyway.

Good catch, it's an issue, the police and military recognize it, and there are things that can be done to address it.

 

Out of curiosity, what do you think is happening mechanically that would cause unreliable extraction with the riding of the slide?

 

What is considered re-cycling the same round too much? 10 times, 100 times ???? I periodically empty the gun so the same round will get recycled, but i'm curious as to how often this needs to be done before the bullet gets set back.

Time to find my caliper

 

I'd say that my bullet in question was probably cycled 15 times to get .020" setback. It was a Georgia arms +p, I'm sure manufacture load process will make set back vary from company to company.