I was competing in an IPSC Level III competition today. As I was using factory ammo I didn’t take the time to barrel drop it all beforehand. A shooter a few places in front of me had a clearly underpowered round go off which caused the bullet to leave the case just far enough to engage the rifling, jamming his pistol.

The R/O them made the mistaken call that he was allowed a reshoot and failed to score the stage. In fact the shooter’s few shot targets should have been scored, but by failing to score them the reshoot became warranted.

When it was my turn on the line I was shooting well. On a course of fire the top shooters were completing in around 22-25 seconds I found myself firing the first of 2 rounds on a paper target, with another 3 paper targets to go, at what turned out to be the 16 second mark. The factory round went off but the next round failed to go into battery. When I tried to eject the stuck cartridge I couldn’t open the slide and after struggling with it had to stop shooting

Now, all things being equal, the R/O would have treated me the same way as the previous shooter. But someone had had a word to him about proper procedure so my run was scored and I received the 7 misses and 3 procedural for failing to engage. This resulted in a 0 stage for me with a time that, all being equal, should have resulted in a time of around 26 seconds (I had to move back 10 meters to engage the last two targets taking 4-5 seconds time).

I want to make it clear, the R/O made the right call for me. But the previous shooter benefited from his earlier mistake. So no sour grapes on my part but it still hurts that a factory round was somehow out of spec enough to jam my pistol.

Lesson learnt? Barrel drop even factory rounds for completion use.

I have a 9mm CZ Tactical Sport. It initially had a problem of being very picky about what ammo it would eat, causing me the same jam during a match. I was able to pound the slide into battery with my hand and complete the course, but it hurt my hand and added 15 seconds to the clock. I went home and reamed the chamber. It only cut a small bit of rifling just ahead of the case mouth. Now it's very reliable with all ammo. You might consider that for your gun, a lot of them have that problem.

Well day 2 saw a second failure of this batch of factory ammo.

To be fair I have used this manufacturers product many times with little problems. One batch of older ammo would not chamber properly in my Tanfoglio pistol as the bullet ogive profile was too far forward for the deep rifling in this pistol. The fix was to run the ammo through my seating die set just deeper enough so the rounds chambered. All other lots of this ammo have been reliable, including the 700,or so I shot through my Kimber pistol when new to break it in last year.

I had one round fail to chamber yesterday and jam on the feed ramp jamming up the pistol. It wouldn’t “shake” free but after locking back the slide and dumping the mag it cleared. The only thing I lost was time.

When I picked up the dumped mag and loose round I found the bullet had been pushed back into the case significantly after jamming.

And again, to be fair, it was not soley an ammo issue. Some of my mags are actually .38 Super as 10 round 9mm 1911 mags are hard to get here just now, and occasionally these mags fail to feel properly. It is not so much a problem with my reloads as I will address below. And it was the only time in the 250-300 rounds fired this weekend to actually jam on the feed ramp. All the other rounds, except the one that jammed in the chamber, functioned flawlessly.

My club President, who is also my shooting “mentor” , happens to be back running the manufacturing side of the ammo company in question. As this is remanufactured ammo he acknowledges that occasionally a round will pass through the line that will be slightly bulged or otherwise out of spec, hence the need to barrel drop before a competition. And given my use of .38 Super mags a run through my crimp die to prevent further bullet setback is now also going to be part of my pre comp procedures.


Toolguy, thanks for your thoughts. This particular pistol, however, does not appear to have the issue you raise as with my reloads I set the projectile out, not to .38 Super length but about half way between that and 9mm. They are still short enough to function in my 9mm mags and reliable in the .38 Super ones too. These rounds feed into the Kimber’s chamber and function without problem.

Unfortunately I ran low on both SP primers and 124 gn projectiles in the last month and did not have enough reloads for this comp, so bought the factory rounds (my supplier has run out of both and his replacement stock is currently on a ship due to arrive in the next few weeks. I have paid for a 6 month supply on indent and like the rest of his customers I am still waiting).

I also recently retooled my 9mm loading with a dedicated press and a new powder dispenser. The result has been two recent squib loads with the bullets stuck in the barrel out of the 400 or so fired since the new setup, hence my consideration of factory rounds for this comp.

Until I have loaded and fired a few more (at least another 1000) of my reloads I may continue to use factory rounds for competitions and my reloads for practice. If I do I will not be using the factory ammo “from the box” again.

What is a barrel drop test?

I've had rounds jam the pistol, reloaded in the mag and run through the gun just fine.. go figure.

Plunky plunky...

Take the barrel out and the bullet is supposed to bottom out without being forced and drop out freely. I have had to re crimp some on a tight chamber. I own a 38 special auto and a new 9mm 1911 that are a little tight. A small taper crimp fixes mine. I have spare barrels to check ammo I shoot. And no--YOU DONT DROP THE BARREL.

[QUOTE=Kiwi cop
Lesson learnt? Barrel drop even factory rounds for completion use.[/QUOTE]

PARDON MY IGNORANCE, Kiwi cop, BUT DESPITE BEING A SHOOTER FOR OVER 60 YEARS, I AM NOT FAMILIAR WITH THE TERM "barrel drop".....

EXACTLY WHAT IS THIS PROCEDURE, AND WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING FOR ? ? ?

__________________
'Nam 1968-69.DAV,VFW,NRA Inst.

Barrel Drop-
The barrel is used as a gauge for the ammo.
Barrel is out of gun, held vertically.
Round is dropped in chamber- it should chamber fully without being pushed.
Barrel is rotated with chamber down, and round should fall out.

__________________
Regards,
Lee Jarrett

And if it doesn't either chamber fully or fall out freely? Bad chamber? Bad ammo? Irrelevant?


Here's why I ask. The picture is of 2 barrels. Up front is the CZ P10C and behind it is an old G19 gen3. Ammo is Speer Gold Dot 124gr. Neither rounds fully seated although the G19 did seat further in. The CZ has around 3k rounds and the Glock an untold number. It was a police gun before I bought it and that was 10 years ago

Had the same happen once with a factory Wolf 9x19 round at a match at Ft. Benning years ago. Case was a bit over 1mm too long. But the other many thousands of rounds shot gave no trouble.

(The matches didn't allow the shooters to collect their brass in order to keep things moving, so I shot reloads or reloadable cases for practice. Late nineties, early 2000s, factory 9mm was so cheap, it didn't much pay to load your own. ~US$0.10/round on average. New factory .45 ACP (WW USA, Am Eagle, PMC) cost less than 9mm does now at US$9-10/50 rds!)

THANKS SO MUCH FOR THE EXPLANATION, handejector......

__________________
'Nam 1968-69.DAV,VFW,NRA Inst.

Care to enlighten us as to the brand and specifics of the ammo?

The tacti-cool weapons instructors of today, don't teach slide bumping
anymore?

Could be any number of problems. Assuming you don't want the gun to jam or fire out of battery, it's a good idea to figure out the cause of the problem.

Another good case for handloading.

__________________
H Richard
SWCA1967 SWHF244