Recovered some boolits

[Black Jaque Janaviac]

The snow has melted. I went out shooting today and found a nice pile of boolits from one of my previous outings. The snow made a nice soft catch preserving the boolits pretty well. I noticed that many of them had a "smile" dented into the nose. Even found some factory j-word bullets I shot that had the same.

I am sure it is from the slide slamming the round forward, but I am at a loss for what to do about it. Would shortening the OAL help?

[Tatume]

Hi Jack,

Would you post some photos please?

Take care, Tom

[jeepyj]

Could it be that the ones with the "smiles" hit the back of another? That is been my experience on my snow finds. I would also like to see a photo.

[Wayne Smith]

What gun, what cartridge?

[Black Jaque Janaviac]

Kimber Micro 9, 9mm

I haven't re-melted them so I should be able to post photos.

The OAL of the factory were 1.15 - they were Winchester white box 115 grain FMJ.
The OAL of the cast boolits is 1.13.

I did not have any feeding problems.

[Black Jaque Janaviac]

Here they are.
You can see the cast boolits have a bigger smile than the FMJs. I hope I'm not violating any forum rules, but sometimes we can learn more about our casting/reloading by comparing to factory ammo.
219404

[vzerone]

Here they are.
You can see the cast boolits have a bigger smile than the FMJs. I hope I'm not violating any forum rules, but sometimes we can learn more about our casting/reloading by comparing to factory ammo.
219404

It appears the bullet is hitting somewhere on the rear of the barrel during feeding. If it weren't a ramped barrel I'd say the sharp edge bevel at the bottom of the chamber mouth, but ramped maybe it's hitting the edge of the hood? Notice it's curved. Take that one cast one and see if the curve mates with the curve of the underside of the hood tang.

[Black Jaque Janaviac]

The hood is just the top part of the chamber?

[sigep1764]

I may be wrong, but didn't Kimber specify 147gr ammunition in their Solo pistols? I wonder if this has something to do with the length of the round?

[vzerone]

The hood is just the top part of the chamber?

Rear part top of the chamber, yes. That bottom corner, may be hitting that and then popping into the chamber.

219415

[43PU]

If you look at the lead cast bullets it looks like it happened when it impacted the berm because of the lead is actually smashed so much that I don’t think of the bullet hitting the barrel would cause that much Deformation

[jeepyj]

Interesting, I'll be watching the response from others. Seems like there hitting something pretty dead on and if it were during clambering the would hang up.

[Black Jaque Janaviac]

43PU,

I think this happened upon feeding. The reason is these are only four of several others that displayed the same strange smile. They never hit the berm - they stopped in the snow in front of the berm, then after the snow melted I found a tidy little pile of bullets. There is definitely scratch marks on some of them indicating erojsion from either the dense snow, or perhaps the sand underneath. So the cast boolit that displays the more severe deformation may have some combination of both, a dent that occured during chambering, and further erosion of that dent as it ploughed into dense snow.

I tried racking a magazine full of the same boolits and inspected those - no dents. I tried operating the slide real slowly and could not see how the boolit would hit the top hood. Must be something in how the gun operates under actual recoil. I may go out a shoot a round, then hand-eject the next round without firing to inspect the boolit. I'll probably have to repeat it several times since this smile only showed up in about half the boolits.

[Black Jaque Janaviac]

Now I know it happens when the round chambers. I went out today and shot one, let the gun operate as normal to load the next round, ejected that one without firing and it has that dent. So unfortunately whatever is happening happens under recoil.

[vzerone]

If it's hitting the hood the magazine lips may need work. Do you have any other magazines? I would try some different magazine to see if it keeps happening.

[Black Jaque Janaviac]

I think I might have figured it out. On the Kimber forum, someone else noted they were getting jams with HP ammo. The folks there said the magazines have really strong springs (both of mine do) and somehow this causes the 1st (sometimes 2nd) boolit in a full magazine to tip downward when the slide begins to push it out of the mag. I loaded up a full magazine and watched, yep, first round did a nose-dive to the bottom of the feed ramp.

I'm not sure if I want to call Kimber just yet or give it some time to see if the magazine springs relax a bit.

[jsizemore]

You might try a different mag or see if there's an upgrade/improved follower/spring. Seems some folks have a time with those Tripp mags.