carguychris
Member
Howdy all,
The short question:
Has anyone experienced any problems with feeding flat-point bullets in a 3rd-gen S&W pistol?
The longer question:
I recently obtained a S&W Model 3904 and took it to the range for the first time a few days back. I had two failures to go into battery when I tried to fire a flat-point load- specifically, 124gr Berry's plated flat-points over 3.6gr of Titegroup, which is a minimum LCN load in the manuals I have.
I only recently started using plated 9mm bullets, and didn't initially realize that Berry's recommends using a slightly hotter powder charge with their bullets vs. cast lead. I thought that this load felt a bit "fluffy" and there was a lot of powder residue on the cases when I used it in my M&P; despite this, the M&P eats it like candy, so I didn't see any reason to pull the remaining 80+/- bullets and start over- I figured I'd just use 'em up and ratchet up the powder charges later.
The 3904 functioned 100% with a 124gr Berry's plated round-nose bullet over hotter powder charges (3.8gr of Titegroup and 4.4gr of HP-38).
Question is this: Were the 3904 malfs caused by the bullet shape or the inadequate powder charge? I'm thinking the latter, but I'd like to hear a second opinion before I order 1,000 FP bullets.
The short question:
Has anyone experienced any problems with feeding flat-point bullets in a 3rd-gen S&W pistol?
The longer question:
I recently obtained a S&W Model 3904 and took it to the range for the first time a few days back. I had two failures to go into battery when I tried to fire a flat-point load- specifically, 124gr Berry's plated flat-points over 3.6gr of Titegroup, which is a minimum LCN load in the manuals I have.
I only recently started using plated 9mm bullets, and didn't initially realize that Berry's recommends using a slightly hotter powder charge with their bullets vs. cast lead. I thought that this load felt a bit "fluffy" and there was a lot of powder residue on the cases when I used it in my M&P; despite this, the M&P eats it like candy, so I didn't see any reason to pull the remaining 80+/- bullets and start over- I figured I'd just use 'em up and ratchet up the powder charges later.
The 3904 functioned 100% with a 124gr Berry's plated round-nose bullet over hotter powder charges (3.8gr of Titegroup and 4.4gr of HP-38).
Question is this: Were the 3904 malfs caused by the bullet shape or the inadequate powder charge? I'm thinking the latter, but I'd like to hear a second opinion before I order 1,000 FP bullets.
Upon getting it open- after some grunting and cursing- the bullet was found to have distinct rifling marks on the shoulder. Another test round seated at ~1.12" had slight rifling contact but the slide operated normally. A third test round ~1.10" had no rifling contact.
