Damned 40 Smith & Wesson reloads!

[Roundnoser]

I am having a heck of time reloading 40 S&W. Of all the calibers I reload, it has to be the most unforgiving. -- Here's my issue:

1. I am loading for a Glock 22 with a Lone Wolf barrel.
2. I am using mixed brass, and a 180 gr. lead cast TC bullet with a 15 BHN and sized to .401"

3. I am using a Redding G-RX die to resize the case web/head, plus full length resizing on a Dillon Square Deal press.

The Lone Wolf barrel has extremely tight tolerances. The .401" dia. bullets will not allow the loaded cartridge to fully seat in the chamber. -- In order to correct this, I run the LOADED round through the GRX die. This corrects the problem very well.

However, I feared that the GRX die would size down the cast bullet in the casing. So I pulled a couple of bullets and mic'ed them. I was really suprised that the diameters stayed at .401". The only boolits that were sized down by the process were those loaded in PMC brass...I assume it has a thicker case wall.

So long as I only use the RPs, Wins, and Federal cases, I didn't have any boolit diameter problems. -- Anyone else experience this? I guess that using a Lee FCD to with the loaded cartridge would accomplish the same thing as the GRX die.

Gonna make ANOTHER trip to the range, and see how this latest batch of ammo works out.

[Stick_man]

Have you tried adjusting your OAL yet? With a super tight chamber, your rounds may be a tad long.

[ku4hx]

I am having a heck of time reloading 40 S&W. Of all the calibers I reload, it has to be the most unforgiving. -- Here's my issue:

1. I am loading for a Glock 22 with a Lone Wolf barrel.
2. I am using mixed brass, and a 180 gr. lead cast TC bullet with a 15 BHN and sized to .401"

3. I am using a Redding G-RX die to resize the case web/head, plus full length resizing on a Dillon Square Deal press.

The Lone Wolf barrel has extremely tight tolerances. The .401" dia. bullets will not allow the loaded cartridge to fully seat in the chamber. -- In order to correct this, I run the LOADED round through the GRX die. This corrects the problem very well.

However, I feared that the GRX die would size down the cast bullet in the casing. So I pulled a couple of bullets and mic'ed them. I was really suprised that the diameters stayed at .401". The only boolits that were sized down by the process were those loaded in PMC brass...I assume it has a thicker case wall.

So long as I only use the RPs, Wins, and Federal cases, I didn't have any boolit diameter problems. -- Anyone else experience this? I guess that using a Lee FCD to with the loaded cartridge would accomplish the same thing as the GRX die.

Gonna make ANOTHER trip to the range, and see how this latest batch of ammo works out.

The round's overall length needs to be such that the boolit doesn't impinge on the rifling. For Lee's 175 grain TC that's 1.105" for me generally. I have gone as long as 1.125" with no problems. Your chamber may be different.

Your final neck diameter needs to be such that the round doesn't stick in the chamber. I set mine to .421" for a .401" diameter boolit.

These loads function beautifully in my LW barrel and my Glock barrel. I use my LW barrel as a Go/No Go gauge to test chamber fit. All rounds should drop into the chamber with a "ker-plunk" and fall freely out when the barrel is inverted.

I'm using RCBS "standard" dies with a separate taper crimp die in the last station of my Dillon.

[40Super]

Have you slugged your barrel and know that it requires .401 , not .400 sized bullets?(not really likely that small but you never know)

I have a Kart NM barrel that is the same way,tight,tight,tight. For shooting lead ,it is beyond a royal PITA!!!.There is NO margin for any brass thickness,runout,extra lube,ect... everything causes stuck rounds. Your probably going to have to live with several jams per box, unless the throat gets reamed a little. Or run smaller bullets,that may be too small for the lead requirements.

[35remington]

Assuming it is caused by the chamber diameter and not by striking the rifling or some other cause, this once again shows the utter idiocy of making a "tight chamber" in a barrel intended for a gun with a loose and variable slide/barrel relationship. This pistol cannot take advantage of any supposed "benefit" from having a tight chamber.

And there's no benefit whatsoever. I've seen tight chamber complaints here before, and there's no reason for it to occur.

That means, if the barrel passes a .400" jacketed bullet, but the .401" cast bullet is tight, that the barrel has noticeably less clearance than a half thousandth per side. That's just crazy.

No room for fouling, and the tight chamber is nothing but a handicap and adds nothing to accuracy.

My condolences. I'd have the chamber enlarged.....assuming it is the chamber diameter that is the problem. You might have the rifling origin looked at also to see if there's excessive abruptness to it.

[geargnasher]

I've pulled and mic'd several j-bullets from factory .40 stuff, it's all been in the .397-8" range.

Gear

[Sonnypie]

Makes me want to open the safe and kiss my Colt 45 ACP.....
I'll tell ya....

[ku4hx]

Assuming it is caused by the chamber diameter and not by striking the rifling or some other cause, this once again shows the utter idiocy of making a "tight chamber" in a barrel intended for a gun with a loose and variable slide/barrel relationship. This pistol cannot take advantage of any supposed "benefit" from having a tight chamber.

And there's no benefit whatsoever. I've seen tight chamber complaints here before, and there's no reason for it to occur.

That means, if the barrel passes a .400" jacketed bullet, but the .401" cast bullet is tight, that the barrel has noticeably less clearance than a half thousandth per side. That's just crazy.

No room for fouling, and the tight chamber is nothing but a handicap and adds nothing to accuracy.

My condolences. I'd have the chamber enlarged.....assuming it is the chamber diameter that is the problem. You might have the rifling origin looked at also to see if there's excessive abruptness to it.

Dang! Guess I'm lucky; maybe I just didn't get barrels made on a Monday or something. I have five LW barrels (had six but sold my 40-9 conversion after I bought a Glock 26) and I've had virtually no problems. Had to tweak COAL for the 10mm one but that was just business as usual.

[runfiverun]

i don't reload the 40 but i do use it to make 44 mag bullets from.
i can assure you that every maker has a different idea about what it's case capacity should be.
r-p,and speer have the most.
fed next and then win and blazer are right close.
magtech is between federal and r-p. but closer to fed.
i'd be measuring case wall thickness and case taper and then sticking to that brand of brass.

[fredj338]

Have you tried adjusting your OAL yet? With a super tight chamber, your rounds may be a tad long.

^^THIS^^ LW has a rep for short throated bbls & w. TC bullets, you often have to seat quite a bit deeper. You may be mistaking the round not chambering for it being too large. If the sized case seat, then it could be the shoulder of the bullet is hitting rifling. Easy enough to see, chamber one & then look for rilfing makrs on the bullet shoulder.

[ku4hx]

^^THIS^^ LW has a rep for short throated bbls & w. TC bullets, you often have to seat quite a bit deeper. You may be mistaking the round not chambering for it being too large. If the sized case seat, then it could be the shoulder of the bullet is hitting rifling. Easy enough to see, chamber one & then look for rilfing makrs on the bullet shoulder.

Perzactly! Then seat the boolit deeper in small increments so as to finally just miss impinging on the rifling. Maybe a hair deeper to cover those cases near the long end of acceptable case length scale.

[W.R.Buchanan]

Roundnoser: I had ran into similar problems with my G35.

The problem is not your loads. It's the barrel!

I use Ranier and Xtreme plated boolits for most all my auto pistol rounds but I have also ran some strait cast as well. So the OAL problem is NOT an issue. I run 1.130 to 1.135 on mine with 165 gr plated RFN's, and 5.4 gr of W231. The dia at the case mouth should be .417-.418 after the crimp. Case dia after running thru the debluging die for case preparation should be .422-.423. Case must still be full length resized during the loading process and this step cannot be ommitted just because you do the debulging step. Many don't understand this?

My G35 would run with the Storm Lake barrel OK sometimes, but malfunctions were frequent enough that the gun could not be depended on to make a clean string of 6 rounds in a match to save it's ****. Since loss of a single round to a malfunction would effectively loose the match, I changed back to the Glock barrel and the problem went away. Completely! I don't know if the barrel was not broken in completely but I figured 200 ronds should have had the barrel settled in, but malfunctions were occurring with virtually every magazine load and never with the Glock Barrel. ERGO? What's the problem? :holysheep

Glocks are designed to run with the looser clearances so as to facilitate reliability. When you tighten up the tolerances you defeat that purpose, and for very little or no gain in accuracy. The chamber on my Storm Lake is.427 the Glock barrel is .435 so the difference is clear.

I talked to the Storm Lake guys at the SHOT Show and they told me to send the barrel back as what I was experiencing was not normal. However every aftermarket barrel I have personally seen being used has this problem of less than 100% reliability. I kind of insist the the gun shoot whatever I put in it and not only what it wants to shoot. Having an unreliable Glock is just plian unacceptable.

Try your reloads in the Glock barrel and see if that fixes the problem, if so then you either have to load special rounds for the aftermarket barrel or use it as drift punch!

We all have pretty much dispelled the myth of using cast in Glock barrels so I wouldn't worry to much about that.

Randy

[prs]

I decided to join the ranks of dern fools by shooting lead hand loads in my Glock 23 with OE barrel. Gee, what's all the hub-bbb, bub? It shoots great and no unusual leading with TL401-175-SW Lee boolit and tumble lube. The OE chambers are NOT tight, for sure, actually pretty sloppy. To save working the brass so much I sized the empty cases through a Lee carbide FCD instead of the slightly tighter full length sizer die, then used the M die to internal size. Seated the boolit by the "kerplop" method in the OE barrel. Crimped lightly with the taper crimp fixture out of the Lee carbide FCD in a larger die body to avoid post sizing. Easy to reload, consistently reliable function and accuracy with rarely a sliver of lead to be found.

So, I get a Wolf barrel to re-join the ranks of the sane shooters' society. The above rounds would not go "kerplop". The boolit nose contacts the rifling before the case mouth seats, but just barely so. In actual fire function it always works with the exception of the first round when I rack the action manually. I have to add a bit of gusto to get the action in battery with total reliabiltiy. Then, guess what. The safe to shoot with lead boolits traditional rifled barrel gets more leading than the OE polygonal one. Not smeared lead, but glitter like lead. This is because the rifling begins so abruptly, no real transition or "lead" at all, so it cuts glitter like bits from the boolits. I wonder if Brownels may have a reamer for that, or if I should shade tree it.

I've about shot through the 2,000 rounds I had on hand will load the next generation to go kerplunk in the Wolf barrel, or at least some of them.

prs

[Roundnoser]

A friend of mine who owns a Glock 22 with a factory barrel shoots my 40 ammo all the time (without the grx sizing), and it runs without a hitch. -- In my case, the only thing that works (and it works well), is to run the completed round through the GRX die. I shot 50 rounds of the new and improved ammo today, and it worked just fine. -- I did notice that the LW barrel doesn't shoot any better than the factory. I only purchased the LW barrel because of the warnings about lead build-up / high pressure, etc. -- I may just re-install the factory barrel and avoid the headaches. -- Thanks for all the advice and comments.

[35remington]

The box of Hornady component bullet 40's I have here are .400" on the button.

[Arceagle]

Just purchased a Glock 34 and am in the process of setting up to shoot lead out of it. Any tricks to getting the 9mm to run? I was looking into a storm lake barrel but it looks like you guys are getting good results with the factory barrels.

[Lloyd Smale]

only glock i have is a 23 and its typical glock. It feeds and shoots anything.

[MBTcustom]

It never ceases to amaze me how many folks bought that line that glock sold about not shooting lead in their barrels, (no offense).
Long before I ever found castboolits.com I told folks that was the biggest pile of dukey I had ever heard come from a manufacturer. I caught a lot of grief about in too. I told em all, if it resembles a pipe in form and function, you can shoot lead through it!
Oh but its too small, it has a strange twisty pattern thats not like another twisty pattern, the twisty patern is .001 deeper on this pipe than that one, its too big, too small, yada yada yada.....its still a pipe!
Compared to jacketed boolits, lead boolits are globs of silly putty. There is no way you are going to get higher pressures with a lead boolit than with a jacketed bullet.
I proved this to myself one day when I wanted to size a .308 seirra GK down to .301 with a Lee style sizer. I had done hundreds of .312 lead boolits and they slipped through with just a little pressure on the handle of the 'Ol rock chucker. When I tried to get that sierra through the die, I thought I was going to break the press off the bench! I ended up getting it started but drove the bullet out with a drift punch. Try it sometime, and then explain to someone how a cast boolit causes more pressure than that.

[ku4hx]

It never ceases to amaze me how many folks bought that line that glock sold about not shooting lead in their barrels, (no offense).
Long before I ever found castboolits.com I told folks that was the biggest pile of dukey I had ever heard come from a manufacturer. I caught a lot of grief about in too. I told em all, if it resembles a pipe in form and function, you can shoot lead through it!
Oh but its too small, it has a strange twisty pattern thats not like another twisty pattern, the twisty patern is .001 deeper on this pipe than that one, its too big, too small, yada yada yada.....its still a pipe!
Compared to jacketed boolits, lead boolits are globs of silly putty. There is no way you are going to get higher pressures with a lead boolit than with a jacketed bullet.
I proved this to myself one day when I wanted to size a .308 seirra GK down to .301 with a Lee style sizer. I had done hundreds of .312 lead boolits and they slipped through with just a little pressure on the handle of the 'Ol rock chucker. When I tried to get that sierra through the die, I thought I was going to break the press off the bench! I ended up getting it started but drove the bullet out with a drift punch. Try it sometime, and then explain to someone how a cast boolit causes more pressure than that.

100% agreement. But one of my five Lone Wolf barrels is a .357 Sig barrel for my 40 cal Glocks. Two are LW barrels for my 1991 vintage G20 and 1993 vintage G23. Those OEM barrels DO have a good bit more "unsupported" area than even the current production Glock barrels. The LW barrels for the G19 and G30 , well ... I just bought them to round out the set so to speak. I had a 40-9 conversion for my G27 but sold it to a forum member shortly after I bought a G26. There are lots of reasons to buy replacement barrels ... some are obviously bettern others.

It's amazing what all you can learn on the internet. I shot thousands of cast boolits out of my 100% stock G20 before I learned I couldn't do that. And l loaded and fired even more thousands of cast boolits from my 1969 vintage Hi-Power and was never conscious of all the problems I was apparently having. I wonder now what other things I'm doing wrong that are disguising themselves as successes.

[W.R.Buchanan]

Roundnoser and PRS: please read the second paragraph of my post above. You will then not have to resize your loaded rounds after loading to get them to work.

For some reason, and I donot know why,,,, People who have included the debulging operation into their case prep for .40 S&W seem to think they don't have to full length size their cases. You still do. All the debulging operation does is make the case into a cylinder again as opposed to a Perrier bottle.

When the brass flows into the Perrier shape it gets thinner near the bottom of the case and as we all know this is where it is unsupported the most. If reloaded many times without debulging, the case walls become thin and that can lead to failure.

You're not going to over work your brass. You can only reload the stuff 4-5 times anyway and you'll probably loose them before that anyway.

Try it this way and see if it makes your gun function right.

Also does that Lone Wolf barrel have "a tapered lead" on the rifling lands in front of the chamber? My Storm Lake barrel does.

Randy

[truckmsl]

I have loaded and shot over 70 thousand cast rounds through my glock 40's with Lone Wolf barrels.

Both of my Lone Wolf barrels would not reliably chamber .401 boolits of any shape or length until I sent them back to Lone Wolf with sample dud rounds and had them open up the leade.

Both barrels have been flawless since.

.

[ku4hx]

For some reason, and I donot know why,,,, People who have included the debulging operation into their case prep for .40 S&W seem to think they don't have to full length size their cases. You still do. All the debulging operation does is make the case into a cylinder again as opposed to a Perrier bottle.


Hmmm, never even thought of that; I've always full length resized everything. Never occurred to me not to for any gun from which I want ultra reliability first. Never had any "Glocked" cases either but that's a discussion for another time.

[W.R.Buchanan]

Glocked cases are NOT peculiar just to Glocks. Virtually all Auto pistols have loose chambers. I had a Para 16-40 LDA that had a chamber that was .437! in dia.

When you have a looser chamber and you full length size the round it leaves the area right in front of the extractor groove bulged out. Example: you start with a case that has been blown out to .435 and fireformed to the chamber. Then you FL size it to .417.... That's a .018 bulge you just put into the case or .009 on a side, and this is because the die won't go all the way to the bottom of the case in the machine.

When you debulge by running the case completely thru a Lee Carbide FCD or the Redding thing, You squeeze the entire case back down to .422 for the entire length. So your resulting bulge after FL sizing is .0025 on a side NOT .009.

Randy

[ku4hx]

I'm going to have to stop reading this thread. If I read much more I'm going to realize that almost 19 years of 40 cal successes is really 19 years worth of failures disguised as successes. Dang, this is just depressing. Now I going to have to start all over again from scratch ... and party like it's 1993.

[W.R.Buchanan]

ku4hx: believe me there are plenty who don't understand the words they read the first time, and are too busy to re read a sentence even though they have no idea of what they just read.

As a result they think using the debulging die is the same as a FL die.

You just did it right from the start, and you probably used good cases along the way.

Had you reloaded some cases marked "FC" a few times you "might" have had a problem.under the right circumstances.

Federal cases made from 1990-96 and marked "FC" have lower webs in the base than newer cases do. The base of the case is badly unsupported. As a result they were much weaker and when a case that had been loaded several times was pushed with a heavy load they would fail. This was known as the Glock KABOOM. This was espeically true with early 1st Gen Glock 22's that had not had the updated barrels installed. This usually results in the mag being blown out the bottom. Severe Glock blow ups can usually be attributed to barrel/chamber failures or overloads resulting in barrel/chamber failures.

This is where all the horror came from, and it was perpetrated in internet chat rooms by Glock Experts! The fact that Glock states that it doesn't want any reloads in it's guns didn't help matters, but then again all gun Mfg's say the same thing. None of them can control what you stick in the pipe, so they have to include a CYA statement.

I know many people who have never debulged a .40S&W case and have never had a problem. Most of those offending cases are long gone, however they still turn up from time to time. I have about 5000 .40 S&W cases, and after finding the one in the pic below, I went in and found 11 more just waiting to screw me. It came from the Santa Barbara Police Pistol Range!

No other .40 S&W cases made by Federal are marked FC,and all new Federal cases say "Federal" and are just fine and I have shot thousands of them. This statement ONLY applys to .40S&W cases! No other calibers are affected by this problem

These offending cases, I believe, are responsible for virtually all Glock blowups, and as a result have single handedly created a whole generation of scaredy cats who won't shoot lead bolits and are so cautious about re-loading they might just as well shoot factory ammo, since loading is too complicated and scary to confront, and the internet says so, so it must be true! [smilie=p:

I find "understanding why something happens" trumps "thinking you know". Reading and re-reading, IE studying, technical data is how you learn. Taking someones word on something that does not make sense,or you don't understand is just plain dumb. Especially when there is so much good written information out there.

The key to figuring out who knows what they are talikng about is "Consistancy over a period of time" IF you look at gunwriters there are some who have been relatively consistant about what they write thruout their carears. This coupled with the first hand research work they all do on Load Development and backed up by field experience is a good indicator of who knows what. Being able to make a living writing about guns for an entire lifetime is another good indicator. Also virtually all of the them will correct any mistakes they make as soon as the find out they are wrong. This is a big deal because nobody knows everything, and realizing this fact early on is a good step towards understanding life as a whole.

Technical Manuals like Lyman 49 are pretty much gospel, and studying them is a key part of "Intelligent Reloading Practice" More than one credible source saying the same thing is better. If everybody says don't do something, maybe you shouldn't.

Still, pretty much all gun writers state in one form or another that reloading for Glocks can be problematic, and the reason for this is the same reason as given above. There are many people who just don't understand what they read and won't study either. This is also why many cartridges are not factory loaded to their full potential, there are just too many idiots that don't read the box and the Mfgs have to make cartridges as idiot proof as possible for the guns they 'might " be used in.

The .40S&W cartridge is not the best cartridge to learn how to reload on. However it is no more dangerous than anything else if you just pay attention and understand what you are trying to do.

Incidentially that case in the pic was not fired in a Glock,,, Note: round firing pin indentation! So much for that "Unsupported chamber BS!"

Randy

[Finnmike]

Everything I know must be wrong. I run my G23 and G30 with lead and Ranier plated, and all I do is run the brass through my Lee 1000 like any other; I have Lees dedicated to 9mm, .40 and .45, with no special sizing or other measures. Of course, I do take the extremely unusual and heretical step of cleaning my barrels.

[ku4hx]

ku4hx: believe me there are plenty who don't understand the words they read the first time, and are too busy to re read a sentence even though they have no idea of what they just read.

As a result they think using the debulging die is the same as a FL die.

You just did it right from the start, and you probably used good cases along the way.

Had you reloaded some cases marked "FC" a few times you "might" have had a problem.under the right circumstances.

Let me tell you an absolutely true story ... I did this in 1974. I'm retired now, but for several years I taught High School science: Chemistry, Physics and Biology. I also got to teach math and English along the way.

I gave a test to my upper level 9th grade Physical Science class one day and gave them the following instruction: "Read the entire test first". The test was 99 True/False questions with the #100 being the statement "Turn your test paper over on your desk, fold your hands on your desk and put your head on your hands. This is a test in following directions. Do not work the test."

Out of a class of 33 HIGH LEVEL kids, FOUR put their head on their hands in about five minutes. The other 29 got to #100 and just groaned and complained. The four who followed directions got some extra credit; the others got neither a bad grade nor extra points. Everybody got THE point.

Now about my cases. With the exception of a few range pickups, I have Starline and Federal nickle plated. The Starline stuff was bought new and I track the number of loadings very closely. The Federal stuff, about 10,000 of them, are true once fired cases I bought from the salvage department of the nuclear plant where I worked at the time. The ammunition was fired by the site security force in periodic requals. I paid $4 per box of about 2,000 for those. That was 2004 or 2005 and I track usage of these cases very closely too. None of the Starline or Federal have had any problems and I never use the range pickups; may as well pitch them. On some of both I'm on my fourth loading and they all work perfectly. I don't load max but I don't load puffballs either. My favorite load for the Lee 175 TC boolit is 5.3 grains of Unique (got lots of it) for about 900 fps.

The only cases I've ever had bulge problems with were new, unfired Winchester 10mm in a Smith 1006. That was in 1989 and a moderate load did bulge the cases badly. I had bought 100 from either MidwayUSA or Gander Mountain so I just pitched the lot. Even now, I tend to steer clear of Winchester 10mm cases in favor of Starline. Full length resizing removed the bulge, but I just never trusted them after the bulge appeared.

Maybe I've been lucky. But when I started out my only mentor was the Lyman manuals I bought and I tended to do two things: follow their advice and keep doing what worked.

[bbs70]

I've got a Glock 22, with Lone Wolf barrel, had it for some years now and have fired thousands of rounds through it.
All lead boolits are from a Lee 175 tc mold.
I've also use Lee dies.
The only trouble I had was the rounds didn't want to chamber.
Thanks to the good folks here I learned I needed a seperate crimping die.
Problem solved.


If its any help, I use 5.5 grains of AA#5.
I've tried quite a few different powders and powder weights and I like this one.
The Glock also likes 5g of VV N340, but at the price for that powder I'll stick with AA#5.