Damned 40 Smith & Wesson reloads!

[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!

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.