.38 Special ammo not firing

A few months ago we purchased the S&W 642LS Lady Smith. We bought some ammo off of gunbroker.com Lawman .38 Special 158 grain low velocity rounds.

From the get-go we had trouble with the rounds. I loaded all five chambers and none of the rounds would fire. In fact, I'm pretty sure the hammer was not striking. When I removed all five bullets, you could hear the hammer clicking.

I think took out two of the bullets and left three in the pistol. This time they fired. So, from then on, that's what I had to do to get the bullets to fire. But sometimes I had to just have one bullet in the pistol for it to fire.

I bought another box, but a different brand. It will be a few weeks before we go shooting again.

Can someone explain to me what happened?

Thanks.

Lawman ammo is Speer's practice ammo using a FMJ bullet. It is usually very good ammo from what I've experienced. When ammo doesn't fire the first time but does on a second strike that usually denotes a primer that isn't seated properly. Since you bought that ammo on Gunbroker are you sure it was factory ammo and not reloads they sold you without telling you? I know factory ammo isn't always perfect but I have never heard of primers that weren't seated all the way coming out of the factory of a well known manufacturer. Speer/CCI usually has very good QC.

You might also make sure the Gun is in good working condition and striking the primers as needed to fire them.

It might not be the ammo.................. just saying.

True low priced ammo may be the problem and hope they did not rip you off with reloaded ammo with out letting you know it was not factory stuff.

The ammo could have been damaged or somehow compromised. You said you bought it off of Gunbroker.

Any S&W should fire any factory round, 100% of the time, unless the ammo has been compromised (flood, bad storage conditions, who knows).

If the revolver will not reliably fire ammo known to be "factory" ammo in good condition (age is not an issue here - only storage conditions), acquired from a trusted source, then send it back to S&W for repair.

If your ammo had come from a reputable source, I would be more inclined to blame the revolver. Ammo for an auction site is probably not the best plan, however.

One use, however - failure drills - practice dumping and reloading, until you get through all the bad ammo. Then throw it away and get good ammo of known quality from a known and trusted source.

johnnygeneric said:

...........
From the get-go we had trouble with the rounds. I loaded all five chambers and none of the rounds would fire. In fact, I'm pretty sure the hammer was not striking.....

Click to expand...

You should see round dents on the primers of the non-firing rounds after you remove them from the gun. If not, the firing pin is not striking the primer & it's a gun issue. If there are good deep dents, it's a primer issue with the ammo. If there are dents but they're shallow, it's likely but not necesarily a gun issue.
Try that new ammo and see what happens.

hotrod150 said:

You should see round dents on the primers of the non-firing rounds after you remove them from the gun. If not, the firing pin is not striking the primer & it's a gun issue. If there are good deep dents, it's a primer issue with the ammo. If there are dents but they're shallow, it's likely but not necesarily a gun issue.
Try that new ammo and see what happens.

Click to expand...

This was going to be my suggestion, as well.

That will tell you if something is amiss with the weapon firing pin system or the ammo, itself.

Dents in unfired rounds = ammo problem
No dents in unfired rounds = firing pin / striker / firing mechanism problem.

Do you have, or does a friend have, a quality .38 special or .357 of known performance? If another gun has no trouble, then it's your gun. If the second gun can't shoot it either, then it's bad ammo.

Troubleshooting 101

There is a screw in the bottom of the gun butt. Make certain it is tight.

blujax01 said:

There is a screw in the bottom of the gun butt. Make certain it is tight.

Click to expand...

Not on a j-frame. And the mainspring tension screw on a leaf-springed S&W is in the front strap of the grip, not the bottom.

Guys thanks for the replies. We'll see with the new rounds I bought.

I'd hate to think it was the pistol. But it went from not missing a shot to not shooting at all. Nothing inbetween.

I find it odd that the firing pin didn't seem to make contact AT ALL with five bullets in the pistol. But would when there were fewer.

I'll contact S&W and ask them about this.

Thanks again.

hotrod150 said:

Not on a j-frame. And the mainspring tension screw on a leaf-springed S&W is in the front strap of the grip, not the bottom.

Click to expand...

D'oH

I knew that, really I did!

Thanks.

And to the OP, regardless that I misstated the actual location of the screw (still embarrassed), the check is still a valid one. Some people think that this is an "adjustment screw" and it is not. If it is backed out, the gun can exhibit the exact behavior you have experienced. Make sure that screw is socked down tight.

Johnny,
Posts #5 and #6 are crucially important. Do what they say, and there's your answer. Until you can answer that question about primer strikes, you can't identify rhe problem.

The OP said,

" I find it odd that the firing pin didn't seem to make contact AT ALL with five bullets in the pistol. But would when there were fewer."

It's the gun.

Just wondering..........did you buy the S&W 642LS Lady Smith new or used? If used, now you know why they sold it.

I'm going to ask some questions that haven't been brought up.

First, do you see the word Cleanfire anywhere on that box of Speer Lawman? If you do that may be the cause of your problem. The primers used in the Cleanfire Lawman ammunition are lead free and have earned a reputation for being VERY insensitive. So much so that some advise that the Cleanfire ammunitions are not suitable for use in double action revolvers because they require an exceptionally strong mainspring and accompanying very heavy trigger.

The second question does your revolver feature a trigger that has been "tuned". Because the J frame uses Coil Mainspring it has proven to be a lot more difficult to produce a lightened trigger pull without having problems with misfires. If you 642 doesn't feature a double action trigger with a rather heavy 12.5 pounds of pull weight it's very likely that lightened trigger is the cause for your problem.

Finally, from your posts it seems that you may be a new shooter, so I'll be a bit blunt. Do you know what a normal firing pin indent looks like in a round that misfired? It's not the deep dimple that you normally see on a round that has fired. One thing that happens during the firing process is that the primer is driven back onto the firing pin as soon as the primer ignites. This causes the deep, well defined dimple that we see on fired cases. On a round that has misfired the dimple will be much shallower with edges to the impression that aren't that well defined.

Next queston is how rapidly are you pulling the trigger? If you are slow motion staging the trigger that may be the reason why you have observed a fully loaded cylinder not firing. When you load the cylinder short you are probably pulling the trigger more rapidly in order to advance the loaded rounds to the firing position. Hard as it may be to believe but I've found that a revolver that is marginal on mainspring tension can be reliable with a rapid trigger pull and misfire on every shot with a slow motion trigger pull. The reason for this is that when you pull a trigger rapidly the inertia of the hammer can allow it to compress the mainspring just a tiny bit more. The solution for this particular problem is either limit your shooting to Federal primered ammo or put in a mainspring with more power.

You might need to have the firing pin replaced with a longer one. I had to do that with a brand new 329NG for the same reason you mentioned. It had something to do with a "drop test" to be compliant to the state of California.
I bought the replacement firing pin from Apex and installed it myself in about 10 minutes. I just didn't want to mail my revolver off for something I could do myself.

Scooter123 answered a question that I had re shooting my Taurus M85 38 special at a lead-free indoor range: it wouldn't fire their frangible rounds. The range meister said "Your gun is broken, better have our serviceman look at it". I left. They were probably using those primers. Thanks for the info. My revolver never had a problem before nor after with standard ammo/primers.