Howdy! Primer mishaps

[mrawesome22]

I would like a better pic of the Starline case. I came in the house and looked at it on the big screen, and it sure looks like a small primer in a large pocket.

[ScottRiqui]

i measured .470 at the case mouth, .003 under what lyman manual said so that might be it!

0.470" for the crimp diameter is just about right, actually. And being three thousandths too narrow wouldn't cause either of your problems anyway (bullet stuck in barrel or case stuck in chamber).

Trust us - assuming your bullets aren't oversized, the *only* thing that will cause a bullet to get stuck in the barrel is no powder or an overly-light charge. You don't have a crimp problem, and you don't have a primer problem.

[mrawesome22]

He didn't have a bullet stuck in the barrel. He was calling the whole cartridge "the bullet".

[ScottRiqui]

Oh, so the primer didn't actually ignite? That changes things entirely. Even after reading his clarification, I thought that he had a squib load AND the spent casing also got stuck in the chamber.

Daniel, what's the overall length of your loaded rounds?

[IllinoisCoyoteHunter]

Wonder if the primer pockets are out of spec? Too deep?

OR

Is the gun going into full battery?

Don't Fed. primers generally have softer cups? Which would rule out weak firing pin spring...

[Daniel E]

full lenth is 1.230 i had them at the specified length but they would not fit in the magazine when i tried to load them.

[Daniel E]

primer pocket depth is .121

[ScottRiqui]

I just checked a half-dozen different brands of brass, and 0.121" for the primer pocket depth appears to be right-on.

Just how hard was it to extract the case from the barrel. You said you had to use a knife to do it - was it hard even with the knife?

What I'm wondering now is if you didn't just have a high primer. When the firing pin struck the primer, it seated it the rest of the way and also jammed the case forward into the chamber. That would explain the lack of a distinct firing pin mark on the primer, as well as the case being hard to extract.

With the Baby Eagle, if a round doesn't fire, can you just cock the hammer back manually and try again? When I had some high primers in .38 SPL loads, the second strike would always fire them, since the firing pin had seated them the rest of the way on the first strike.

[Daniel E]

it wasn't too hard, just not able to do it by hand, the guy working at the shooting range even said he thought the primers looked low, compared to the 10 shot out of it after, the only problem with it maybe starting out as a high primer is that out of the other three boxes of 50 they all look identical.

[Daniel E]

as for pulling the hammer back i tried but got nothing

[IllinoisCoyoteHunter]

I wonder if the profile of the bullet is causing the bullet, loaded to his overall length, to hit the rifling and not quite go into full battery....but still fire on occasions where the slide has enough energy to either seat the bullet deeper in the case or jam it far enough into the rifling to go into full battery.

This would explain the rounds being so hard to get out of the chamber.

[Daniel E]

Sent from my Desire HD using Tapatalk 2

[Daniel E]

The left is my bullet the right is a factory, which I shot the same type of bullet last week at the range

Sent from my Desire HD using Tapatalk 2

[ScottRiqui]

Do you still have some of the factory Federal ammo that worked fine for you? What's the crimp diameter on those?

Federal primers have softer cups than most brands, so if you're not getting a good firing pin mark (and assuming there's nothing wrong with your hammer or firing pin), then that would lead me to believe that the cartridge is going too far into the barrel, and the firing pin is unable to go far enough forward to give the primer a good strike. A crimp diameter of 0.470" should still allow the cartridge to headspace on the case mouth, but my only .45 ACP pistol is a 1911 - maybe the Baby Eagle has a slightly larger chamber?

[Daniel E]

just measured inside diameter of the barrel .473

[mrawesome22]

The above pics are of cartridges/shells/rounds, not "bullets".

Sent from HenseMod6.

[mrawesome22]

If your barrel measures .473", it is not a 45acp.

Do you mean the chamber measured .473"?

Cases that are too short would also allow the cartridge to go deep in the chamber.

Sent from HenseMod6.

[ScottRiqui]

Hmmm - I'm running out of ideas here. Check a couple of your empty Starline cases - is the length 0.88"? It's hard to believe they'd mess that up, but it would cause the cartridges to be seated too far into the chamber.

[1Hobie]

i'd suggest you get someone local to come over and help you out. All this on-line speculation is going no where. You're off to a bad start. Get someone you know to come check out your set-up or your going to have something bad happen farting around.
Hobie

[Daniel E]

thats what i have concluded, one last thing i popped the bullet out of the hollow point winchester and put one of the noslers in it, now all of the sudden it doesnt fall in as far as it was, so if this is the case the firing pin would have hit the starline rounds just pushing the whole thing in, but the bullets match up so it has to be something in either resizing or the crimping that is making the cases bulge out.

[Daniel E]

ill search around the local gunshops and see if they have anyone, i'm not an idiot and don't want to blow up my gun or even worse, i know its something small that i am missing, again thank all of yall for your help. Ill keep yall updated, maybe if i think it over ill come up with something.

[ScottRiqui]

Well then, there are a couple more things you can check:

Take a couple of your "virgin" Noslers (ones that haven't been loaded into a case yet) and measure their diameter.

Take several of your handloaded rounds and measure the diameter at a couple of different places along the length of the case. Your chamber diameter is 0.473" (and may taper to a smaller diameter as you move forward in the chamber toward the "step" where it goes down to the barrel diameter.) Perhaps part of your loaded round is wide enough that it's an interference fit in the chamber.

Did you ever do the "plonk" test with all of your remaining reloaded rounds to see if they all drop freely into your gun's chamber?

[ScottRiqui]

I just checked a dozen of my .45 ACP handloads. The bullet does bulge the case slightly (you can visibly tell where the bullet base sits in the case), but even at their widest point, the loaded cartridges are no wider than 0.471"

[Daniel E]

Yup they landed in the same spot as the reloaded win the only reason I saw that is because I marked around the case with a sharpie before I reloader it

Sent from my Desire HD using Tapatalk 2

[ScottRiqui]

Yup they landed in the same spot as the reloaded win the only reason I saw that is because I marked around the case with a sharpie before I reloader it

This is the first time you've mentioned reloaded Winchester brass. So you've got factory ammunition that works fine, reloads using Winchester cases that work fine, and reloads with Starline brass that have given you at least two failures to fire?

Did you ever check the length of the unloaded Starline cases?