Extra round in the chamber?

[Sport45]

When I unload, I like being able to put the round I remove from the chamber back into the magazine. No loose round rolling around.

If you do this be sure to watch for bullet setback in the round that is repeatedly chambered. I would have a dedicated magazine for the "precharge" and keep the rounds from unloading loose. When the precharge magazine is empty I'd reload it randomly from the loose rounds. At least that way you are not cycling one round over and over and chancing severe bullet setback. (A little setback on some cartridges can add A LOT of pressure.)

Not a problem for me since the only handgun I carry is a revolver.

 

[CZguy]

There's another reason for it - law forbids having a chamber loaded on semi-auto pistol so i can always appeal on a accidentaly slide racking . Though, noone checks it unless i do something stupid (and i'm the only one handling the gun here).

I'm confused. Are you saying there is a law preventing you from having a loaded chamber in a semi auto?

 

[torpid]

WayneConrad

When I unload, I like being able to put the round I remove from the chamber back into the magazine. No loose round rolling around.

Sport45

If you do this be sure to watch for bullet setback in the round that is repeatedly chambered.

I've experienced it too- it's unnerving to set the rounds next to each other and see one that's considerably shorter from setback.

 

[Medusa]

CZGuy, the law specifically says, one must not have a round in a chamber of a semi-auto pistol (FA-s are illegal to civilians anyway), even when carrying the gun. So when the need arises (is self-defense situation) one must pull the gun, take off the safety, rack the slide and at first shoot the warning shot. If the BG has a gun, the warning shot isn't nessesary. And gun must be carried so that it is concealed, isn't easy to access (for BG of course, so he couldn't grab it). When keeping a gun in home, the gun must be unloaded and secured in safe, ammo being in separate locked box in safe.

 

[CZguy]

CZGuy, the law specifically says, one must not have a round in a chamber of a semi-auto pistol (FA-s are illegal to civilians anyway), even when carrying the gun. So when the need arises (is self-defense situation) one must pull the gun, take off the safety, rack the slide and at first shoot the warning shot. If the BG has a gun, the warning shot isn't nessesary. And gun must be carried so that it is concealed, isn't easy to access (for BG of course, so he couldn't grab it). When keeping a gun in home, the gun must be unloaded and secured in safe, ammo being in separate locked box in safe.

Medusa,

Thanks for the clarification. The world is full of laws that go against common sense, and this sure sounds like on of them.

 

[another okie]

Of the handguns I've owned, only a Keltec P32 was more reliable with a downloaded magazine.

I put one round in an empty magazine, load from that, remove the now empty magazine, and put in a full one. That way I can confirm that a round is chambered. Loading from a full mag it's easy to not notice if the slide fails to strip a round into the chamber.

 

[pytron]

I put one round in an empty magazine, load from that, remove the now empty magazine, and put in a full one. That way I can confirm that a round is chambered. Loading from a full mag it's easy to not notice if the slide fails to strip a round into the chamber.

You are correct that it can be difficult to determine that a round has chambered sometimes.

I start with a full magazine, then chamber a round, eject magazine, add cartridge, re-insert magazine.

If I somehow failed to chamber the top round out of my full magazine, I would discover it very quickly. Because when I try to add an additional cartridge to the full magazine it will not go in.

 

[N3rday]

hate to go off-topic on my own thread but...what is setback?

 

[usp9]

Yes

That is how I always carry my Seecamp...load the mag, chamber a round, replace that round in the mag, reinsert the mag...ready to go 7 rounds.

And FWIW, no I don't think this practice harms the mag spring.

 

[JohnKSa]

Setback is specifically when the bullet is pushed into the case during the feeding process (usually in a self-loading firearm), but it can also be used to refer to a bullet that was loaded too deeply into the case initially.

A certain amount of setback can be expected as the feeding process can be quite violent in semi-autos. However, pushing the bullet farther into the case reduces the volume inside the case which causes the pressure upon firing to increase. Some rounds (most notoriously the 180gr .40 S&W) are more sensitive to setback than others and even a relatively small amount of setback in such cartridges can be dangerous.

When it becomes a problem is either reloads or lower quality ammunition in which the case is not crimped properly, or in the situation where a single round is subjected to multiple feeding cycles. The latter is a common situation when a gun unloaded and reloaded often but rarely shot.

It's also possible to have setback in bolt rifles with very heavy recoil when the magazine is topped off repeatedly leaving a round or two in the bottom of the magazine to be subjected to multiple recoil impulses.

 

[Aguila Blanca]

Here's the quote from my Beretta 92G manual:

LOADING TO MAXIMUM PISTOL CAPACITY: During normal chamber loading, as described above, the pistol contains one round in the chamber plus 14 rounds in the magazine. This is an advantage because the magazine spring is not fully compressed but under about the same tension as a 15-round loaded spare magazine.​

​

?????

Is it because I'm not Italian that I do not understand how one magazine with 14 rounds has the spring compressed to the same tension as another magazine with 15 rounds? The statement does not compute. Or do berettas come with a different magazine for the spare?

 

[JohnKSa]

When the magazine is loaded into the pistol, the bottom of the slide is compressing the top round downward into the magazine. This can usually be seen when disassembling the pistol after shooting as the downward pressure onto the brass cartridges causes the bottom of the slide to be covered in "brass" marks that have rubbed off the cartridges in the magazine from the slide's backward motion in recoil.

This is common to all autopistols. If this were not true, the round would not pop up far enough to allow the slide to strip it from the magazine and push it into the chamber on the return stroke.

It's also possible to detect this by noting the difference in pressure required to insert a loaded magazine vs inserting an empty magazine, or comparing the difference in pressure required to insert a loaded magazine into a gun with the slide forward versus the pressure required to insert a loaded magazine into a gun with the slide locked back.

For a very simple way to note this, put a fully loaded magazine into an unloaded pistol. Now SLOWLY pull back the slide. You'll note that as the slide clears the back of the top round in the magazine, the round will pop up under spring pressure. That spring pressure was pushing the round up against the bottom of the slide until the slide moved out of the way. And therefore, the slide was also causing the magazine spring to be compressed more than it would have been compressed had it been loaded with the identical number of rounds but NOT inserted into the pistol.

Beretta is saying that the sum of the downward compression by the slide plus the compression on the spring generated by 14 rounds in the mag is roughly the same amount of compression on the spring of a mag that is NOT inserted into the gun (and therefore has no extra compression due to the slide) but is fully loaded with 15 rounds.

 

[N3rday]

Wow, great responses...I hadn't thought of the issue of a full magazine plus one in the chamber as having more spring pressure than just a fully loaded mag...

 

[ugaarguy]

Well I found this interesting; http://www.springfield-armory.com/safety.shtml