Still new at reloading

[brselman]

I am still very new to reloading and could use some input. I made a batch of 9mm Lugar cartridges using a Lee Turret. I used AA5 powder and 115 grain precision lead black bullets. I set the autodisk to .34 as directed. I measured the actual weight of the powder that was being dispensed and it was 5.1 +/- .1 to .2 grains. This is substantianlly below the starting load of 5.7 grains listed in the table, but Lee tells you that you should still be able to use their autodisk as a start. The COL was set to 1.100 +/- .005.

When I shot the cartridges in my Glock 17, I was dead on center BUT the cartridges wouldn't feed. And sometimes they fed but wouldn't fire.

I have loaded about 1000 rounds with Power Pistol and Rainier coated bullets and not had this problem. Was my powder load simply too light?

[Dave R]

I'm not the expert here, but it sounds like 2 separate poblems to me.

The not feeding is probably caused by the powder charge being too light, as you suspected. Its not cycling the slide far enough to strip the next cartridge. At least that's the way it looks from here...

The not firing is probably a priming issue. My guess is the primers are not seated fully, so the firing pin impact is seating the primers deeper, and not cruching them enough to fire them. Again, just a guess...

[Unclenick]

It may also be that since your round isn't pushing the slide all the way to the rear, cartridges it still picks up are not stripping quickly or cleanly off the magazine because the slide has had no opportunity to establish inertia on its way forward. This can slow the slide down enough that when it has finished stripping the cartridge it has so little push left it doesn't chamber completely. Check that your slide is actually all the way into battery on these rounds. Otherwise look to the primer seating as Dave said.

By the way, light loads of double-base powders often don't shoot very cleanly becasue they need more pressure to do so. Without that pressure their output will drop exponentially. This affects getting enough recoil to cycle the gun. If you are going to keep the loads light, consider a single-base powder like Acurate's Solo 1000, or else a very fast double-base, like Bullseye, or 700X, or N310.

Nick

[speedy8084]

I am no expert either but I do know what the books say...Always use the startup amount listed in the table...Some powders can actually cause higher pressures with less than the minimun recomended amount, others just don't work well below minimum recomended weights.

[Unclenick]

Actually, the standard buzz I hear all the time now is own a minimum of three manuals and check the minimum pressures for your powder in all three. Disagreements and typos are not all that wildly uncommon. The concern about undercharge is a double-base powder problem in particular. Mostly with slow rifle powders though. Occassionally with a pistol powder like H110/W296.

One thing to watch out for in pistol loads is that the little short cases have so little powder capacity to begin with that what seems like small increases in seating depth can take away significantly from powder capacity. This causes pressure to go up. Just a 0.1 inch increase in seating depth from .278" to .378" with a 230 grain hardball bullet in a .45 ACP case will take a government level load from a very safe 17,000 P.S.I. to an over-the-limit 24,000 PSI. So watch not just the powder but the cartridge length.

Nick