I remember Baby Brownings from the 60s being very reliable. Recent ball loads have been less so. I found that the CCI Blazer ball and cci gold dot jhp are reliable in this pistol. Both rounds have a visible crimp where most ball ammo does not. As a result, the prominent rim of the ejecting empty is prone to slam into the mouth of the case of the next round up. On top of that, several of the generic ball loads produce velocities of less than 600 fps. I set up to reload the cartridge and found that the Remington ball load became reliable when I applied a substantial crimp- a practice I follow with my reloads. The heavy crimp jumps the remington velocities from 690s to the low 700s.
Both the Hornady and Speer reloading manuals are pretty negative about reloading the cartridge saying the small case capacity will lead to wide velocity variations with small charge variations and that it would be very easy to double charge a case. Neither proves to be the case. Ball loads using a lee die set supplied dipper that throws 1.4 grains of bullseye are very consistent and there is no possible way the case will hold a double charge. I made a dipper for the 35 grain gold dot at the speer maximum of 1.7 grains and got good consistency with it also.
