This is kind of a long story, but I hope y'all will be able to help me out here. The best place to start is at the beginning I suppose.

I am fairly new to the world of handguns, having done most of my previous shooting with a rifle. I purchased my first handgun on December 27, and it was an SD40DE. I love the way the gun fits my hand, I love the way it shoots, basically, I love everything about this gun. Now, on to the part where I am disappointed.

2 weeks ago, on the 10th, I went to the range and put about 60 rounds through the gun, so that brought the total to about 300 rounds through the gun since I bought it. I noticed an odd swelling toward the back of the casing, as well as a crease. We are trying to get into reloading, and that's why I was looking at the brass. I broke the gun down, and looked down the barrel, at which point I saw something that concerned me.
There was a "divot" or crater, whatever you want to call it, in a half moon shape that corresponded to the swell and crease in the brass. I called Smith and Wesson, and explained the situation to them, in order to try and get the weapon fixed. The person that I talked to was extremely abrupt, and unhelpful, and his only course of action was to send me a shipping label so that I could send them the gun to test. I wouldn't normally have had a problem with that, except that I had to qualify for my CHL last Saturday, which would have been less than 2 weeks from the time I sent it to them.

That aside, the reason I purchased a Smith and Wesson was because of their reputation for customer service, and reliability. So, I called back the next day, talked to another representative, and he agreed to ship me another barrel overnight so that I would have it in time to qualify with. There wound up being some confusion with the shipping department, and I didn't get my new barrel until Thursday the 17th, as opposed to Tuesday the 15th, which was what I had originally been told. Not too much of a problem, except that the barrel was incomplete. Literally, it was not finished. I installed it in the gun, and when I tried to jack a round into the chamber, the gun jammed, because the chamber was 1/8" too short for a round. I called that day, got the same, rude, abrupt, unhelpful customer service representative again, who proceeded to give me a lecture as to why .40 S&W rounds expand some anyway, and to tell me, despite the fact that both barrels I had were defective, and he had not seen them, and didn't know how bad they were, to qualify with the gun anyway.

I got extremely frustrated with this guy, and decided to call back the next day(having now been trying to get a good barrel for a week and a half) and wound up talking to the guy who had originally sent me a barrel. He was very nice, and apologetic, said he would overnight me a barrel, and that at the latest I would have it on Monday the 21st(this was on Friday the 18th, and I had to qualify on the 19th). I wound up having no choice, and qualified with the gun anyway, with very few problems, aside from poor feeding, which I attributed to my trying to shoot PMC ammo. I got the second replacement barrel today, which is the 24th. I installed it in the gun, and went to the range to test it. Within 25 rounds, it was exhibiting the same symptoms as the original barrel that came in the gun.
This is now the 3rd barrel I have tried in this gun, and all 3 seem to be functioning improperly. I will be adding pictures in the next few minutes to show y'all what I'm talking about, but my question is this: Is this type of thing normal, or have I just had really bad luck with this?
If any of y'all have any info on this, please don't hesitate to inform, educate, etc. At this point, I am extremely frustrated and disgusted with Smith and Wesson, to the point of not wanting to buy another one of their weapons if this cannot be resolved.

Sorry for the long post, but it's kinda hard to do in short.

Post a picture of the brass. It sounds like normal .40S&W "bulge" which many guns do (including Glocks).

If you want to reload the brass, Lee makes a "bulge buster" setup that will iron the bulges back out of the brass. Its a good idea regardless if you use any range pickup brass as Glocks really bulge .40 brass bad and you never know if the brass you're picking up is "Glocked" or not.

Here are a couple of pics I think. One is of the brass, the other is the chamber. I had a Glock armorer tell me that if any of his weapons looked like that, he would be sending them back. Also, my dad bought a Sig P250 the same day I got my SD40VE, and his gun doesn't do that.

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Here is the barrel

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It does not sound to me like barrels 1 or 3 have anything wrong. If the chamber in barrel 2 is, in fact, 1/8 inch short, then you just drew the "unlucky card," as this is an exceedingly rare complaint. So rare, in fact, that I do not recall anyone ever making this complaint before. If you got three bad barrels in a row, then I would not go outside anytime lightning may occur, were I you. I think this is so statistically unlikely that it almost is unbelievable. I wish you luck in either getting a problem-free barrel or in figuring out that there is actually nothing wrong with yours so that you will have some peace of mind.

The only thing that really bothers me is that for the first few shots, they did nothing to the brass that was noticeable. The crease is really what concerns me, that and the fact that my barrel didn't look like that before, and now it does.

I believe this is barrel #2, with a live round set in it for demonstration.

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Not sure about barrel #2, but like shawn I belive that #1 and #3 are probably fine. That's just not a fully supported chamber (my SD has the same "half moon" in it, as do Glocks).

Get either the Lee Bulge Buster kit or the Redding G-RX Base Sizing kit (the issue is common enough that two die makers make kits to fix such brass ), push through your brass after resizing (or you can to the finished rounds) and don't worry about it .

Did your SD always have that half moon? I thoroughly inspected both barrels before firing, and it wasn't there beforehand. I knew Glocks didn't have the fully supported chamber, but I thought that was something that was somewhat unique to them. I'm really just trying to cover all my bases here, so forgive me if I seem to be full of too many questions.

This post nailed it.

Bing or Google "Glock Smile" http://glock.pro/ammunition-reloadin...ged-brass.html

I don't have a 40 or any Glock but I have certainly read many posts about bulged cases and unsupported chambers so this not anything new. That's just the way they are. The pic of barrel #2 with the round sticking out looks like the brass wasn't sized properly. Was that a reload and/or did you try several different rounds or perhaps even a different brand?

I tried winchester, remington, PMC, and Speer ammo with that barrel, and none of them sat flush. No reloads, 100% factory ammo.

Also look in the reloading section, there is a thread there about unsupported Glock chambers.

Sent you a Private Message.

Thanks,3

I have always heard of 40calibers leaving a slight bludge in the ammo. I also found this thread on the sight that gives a comparasion of a Glock 40 and Sigma 40 barrel side by side. I hope its ok for me to use (yes its several years old) 40 S&W and Glocked brass

All that and nothing was wrong with the gun in the first place. Go figure.

So, all of you who have SD40's have the same "cut" in the chamber that I have? If you don't know what I mean, the picture of the barrel that does not have a round set in it is what I am talking about. That spot where there is obviously a line/division of some sort, doesn't look normal to me. If that SHOULD be there, then why didn't I see it before I put rounds through the gun? If that is just a symptom of guns that don't have fully supported chambers, then I guess it's ok. Not really crazy about it, but it's ok. Like I said, I am relatively new to the world of handguns, but it just seemed weird. Also, if a Glock armorer (who would presumably know about the unsupported chambers and swelling) isn't comfortable with something that "Glocks do", why should I be? I guess that was one of my biggest concerns.

There are other threads in this section that address case bulging. This is normal. The chamfer at the top for the feed ramp is normal. It's there to aid in chambering the round S&W put it there because of earlier issues with some brands of ammo. When reloading ammo with LEE presses 1 of the dies straighten the cases out and takes the bulge out.