Problems reusing Glock-fired brass

[DragonFire]

I ran into problems while shooting my S&W 646 revolver, which uses .40S&W rounds in moonclips. Some moonclips were nearly impossible to eject without pressing the ejector rod against a bench or something else as solid.

I sent the revolver back to Smith & Wesson and they replaced the cylinder. When the revolver came back it seemed worse than before. To their credit Smith offered to work on it again. But while talking to the smith who worked on it, the subject of what ammo I was using came up.

I reload, of course. So I went to the range with several batches of my reloads and a box of factory. First off, the factory rounds seemed much hotter than my rounds (which were developed with IDPA in mind, so they are on the mild side). Results were most moon-clips with my reloads were difficult to very hard to eject, while all of the moonclips with factory ammo came out easily. A surprising event was when a couple of RIMZ moonclips wouldn't fit around the cylinder when loaded, but would fit empty.

So I started measuring the fired cases. According to my loading manuals the diameter of a .40S&W case should be .424 at the bottom of the case. All the factory rounds measured around .423. Most of my reloaded cases measured a little higher, but a few of the cases measured .430. So I measured unfired rounds. Factory ammo measured .420 (under the spec), and my reloaded rounds measure between .424 and .431.

I do my loading on a Dillon Square Deal B, which I thought which resizes the entire base. That obviously isn't happening.

I buy most of my cases as "once fired". Most of my .40 reloads are shot in a Glock 27, and the rest through a Taurus PT100. I had heard that cases shot in Glocks couldn't/shouldn't be used in non-Glocks but have never had any problems until now.

Has anyone else experienced this problem with Glock brass? Should I attribute my problems with my revolver to this, so the solution would be to keep a batch of cases exclusively for my revolver and keep my Glock brass separate from them. Or should I continue to look for a problem with the revolver stickage? If so, any ideas?

 

[Razor 10]

Well, My take on this is, with the radiused mouth of the dillon size die and the swollen brass you will not be able to reduce the base dimension very consistantly, as you already know. One solution would be to switch dies but with the S.D.B. it requires you to use its specific dies...so thats out the window. If you have a single stage press youcan get a lee size die and run all your brass through it before doing a run on the progressive. Or with that single stage press, get a Lee Factory crimp die and run all your loaded rounds through it, after your run on the progressive. It will take extra time but your sticky brass problem will probably be gone.


If you do not have a single stage press you can pick one up from Lee pretty cheap.

Hope this helps
Nick

 

[Ktulu]

My suggestion would be to buy 500 or so brand new Starline cases and use those. Since you're using them in a moon clipped revolver you wont lose the empties and you can reload them until they split. At 125 (IDPA revolver class) or so power factor they should last a very long time.

 

[B36]

Glock 40 brass

Will likely have a bulge at the 6 Oclock psn due to lack of support in the Glock design . Regular resizer will not remove this bulge. I use a different press (big old Hollywood) with a very thin shell holder to get a proper resize on this part of the brass. Use this press and thin shell holders for all brass I reload.

Better solution is to avoid any brass shot in a Glock. The nine is not bad, but the 40 and 45 I would avoid.

 

[larryw]

If anything, I'd avoid both 9 and 40 Glock brass more than 45. 9 and 40 are high pressure rounds and the unsupported chamber will deform the brass more that the 45, which is low pressure.

Look for the square firing pin strike to learn if the brass you buy is run from a Glock.

 

[halvey]

I'm not that familiar with the SDB, but say on the 550, couldnt you just screw the die down until it touches the plate, then another half turn?

Wouldn't that resize the brass? I used range brass for .45 in my 550 and I'm sure there's plenty of Glock brass in there. I've had very few problems with brass feeding in all my 1911's.

Just a thought.

 

[Peter M. Eick]

I have read, but freely state that I have not done the following...

Take a 40 cal lee FCD die. Gut it out and have a straight hole down to the die. Now using a lag bolt that has been filed to fit into a shell holder, push the glocked 40/10mm case completely up through the FCD die till it comes out the top. This way the case is resized to the very base.

It always sounded like a neat idea and the originator even posted pictures of it on the web over on glocktalk I believe.

Frankly, I just toss glock brass that accidently gets into mine. It is pretty obvious in the 40's because of the buldge.

 

[stans]

I would simply avoid reloading Glock fired 40 brass period. That bulge in the case now represents a real weak area of the case head. You can iron it out and bring it back to dimensional specs, but it has been work hardened and is now much weaker than fresh brass. I would recommend buying a batch of brass for your revolver and just fire that brass in your revolver. With moon clips you will not be losing the brass during a reload, so that batch should last a long time, especially when loaded lightly.

 

[Master Blaster]

Check you resizing die and make sure its screwed all the way down so at the top of the stroke its touching the shell holder.

I have fired and resized quite a bit of 9mm and .45 acp brass fired from my glocks and others, and fired it in other 9mms and in the glocks, and in my .45 1911's multiple times with no problems what so ever.

Long ago I did have a problem with some of the .45 cases, it was because I was over crimping slightly, and also did not have the size die all the way down ( the lock ring had loosened from thousands of cycles), and the tollerences stacked and caused the base of the case to be slightly oversize on the occaisional round.

You could also use the Lee factory crimp die on all of the rounds after they have run through the squaredeal B. But check the other stuff first.

I have a RL550 b and the dillon dies work fine.

 

[Austin Charles]

I have reloaded thousands and thousands of glock brass.

In fact I just loaded 600 rounds this week that is on it's 5th reloading with no signs of over preasure. All in 40.

I check it out closely. I have had no trouble. But all mine have been for a Glock 23 and 27.

 

[Jim Watson]

I think Ktulu has the right idea; just buy some new brass and dedicate it to the sixgun. That is what I do with .45 ACP for my M25-2.

Otherwise, Peter's idea might work, if you have the single stage press to process mixed brass with. No press die resizes the entire case. The first .125" from the rim is buried in the shellholder or plate, and the taper or radius of the die mouth misses some more.

 

[Khornet]

I too re-re-reload Glock brass

fired in my G22, many times. I see no bulge after sizing and usually none after firing. No feed problems. I've never had a case fail. I don't know where all this 'don't reload Glock brass' stuff comes from, but keep it up folks. More cheap brass for me. Yep, avoid that stuff--it's deadly. Yep.

 

[halvey]

I don't know where all this 'don't reload Glock brass' stuff comes from,

Glock?

 

[Khornet]

Well,

Glock, like so many other manufacturers, warns against reloads in their guns, but they don't say anything specifically about Glock-fired brass. At least my owner's manual doesn't.

 

[sigma40sw]

I think the best advice is to just buy new brass and keep it seperate for you revolver.

But if you must reload "Range Brass" , it needs to be fully resized.
You can get it roll sized in a Case Pro machine that will bring the case back to it's proper diameter, or you can have your sizing die reworked so it will size farther down the case.

I load on a Dillon 550 which takes the standard die thread, I sent my Dillon 40 S&W sizing die back the them and complained about the problem, my solution at the time was to use Lee dies, which did not fully fix the problem,but worked better than Dillon's dies. I mentioned this to them and they refunded me the price of the sizing die. I took the money and bought an RCBS Carbide 40 S&W sizing die. I modified the die by grinding the bottom off on my bench grinder, so it would size further down the case. I only left a small chamfer on the bottom to start cases into the die. This is only a problem with cases that have been stepped on,but I can squeeze them in. I just slows me down a little. This cured my 40 brass problem and didn't add any steps to my loading process.

Maybe you can modify your Square Deal sizing die the same way. By shortening it it woiuld allow you to size more of the case.

sigma40sw

 

[NoHarmNoFAL]

I just reloaded 10,000 40 S&W on a SDB with the brass that I sell and there was a fair bit of it "Glock Shot". I case gaged every one of them and found 2 that would not go through the case gage. I think a lot of the Glocks have unsupported chamber nonsense comes from the early FC headstamped Federal brass that was not to spec that would belly and was dangerous if you were unaware of it. The new brass does not have such problems. I would like to see a semi-auto pistol that has a full supported chamber. If you don't have a case gage, get one. If the round goes in the case gage and falls out but won't chamber in your cylinder or barrel than your chambers are out of spec. Something you didn't mention is are you having to force the rounds into the cylinder? If not then there may be other issues involved in your extraction problems. I do not recommend reloading 40S&W as many times as 45acp but I have no fear of reloading brass from any Glock. I think the "Gun board" rumor mill just loves the Glock bashing for some unknown reason.

 

[DragonFire]

All my reloads fit fine in the case gage. And I didn't have problems loading any of them into the revolver cylinder.

I don't think the problem was really with the cases themselves exactly. None of the fired cases were too much larger than the spec. Keep in mind that we're talking in thousandths of an inch here, so the measurements are all pretty small. I believe the problem was/is due to the titanium cylinder. My dealer friend found a reference that said titanium expands twice as much as steel. So we're thinking that that extra expansion allows the fired case to expand just a little more than it would in a steel cylinder. I found that cases around .425 causes problems while .423 worked okay.

The Square Deal-B takes special dies, that aren't very cheap, so I didn't really want to mess around with shortening the sizing die. For the price of a set of SDB dies I bought a Lee Challenger single stage press and a set of carbide dies (a full set of dies cost me $10 than just a resizing die by itself). The Lee dies seems to have solved the problem (though I haven't shot that many resized cases yet). Running the cases through brings the base of the case (or very very close to the base of the case) back to around .421 which is what new factory cases are measuring. I'll have to see if and how much this resizing affects case life.

One added side affect is that my daughter is always asking me if she can help me reload. While I've tried to find useful things for her to help me with, I haven't let her really reload any rounds. Now she can resize my .40 cases for me while I'm loading new ones. We're doing the same physical motions, so she's happy to help, and I get my cases resized without having to do it myself.

Thanks for all the advice. It's amazing how many good ideas you guys have.

 

[Razor 10]

Glad to hear you have solved the issue.


Nick