45 acp in glock...HELP

[HappyHunter]

I have been attempting to make handloads for a guy at the gun club.

He has a 45 acp glock.  The barrel has been changed to allow for lead bullets and I am trying to make 185 gr swc.  

I can get feeding no problem and I have increased the charge enough to fully eject  and push back slide.   But I have encountered two problems;

#1  Chamber gets dirty very fast, enough to hinder feeding.  

#2  about 5% of ammunition will not ignite.  There is a substantial strike on primer, I even tried again and then therer are two hammer strikes on primer.  I took four "duds" and cycled in my Kimber and had four ignitions.   What is this about?  

This glock will work fine on Wolfe ammo.  What am I doing/not doing?

[Alice Cooper]

i did the same thing you did, exactly! i dunno, i'm thinking maybe my primers might not be seated all the way,so i make an effort to remember this and seat them positively.it seems to have cleared up the problem, but it's just a guess..like you, my kimber ate all the duds without a hiccup...another fellow has the same problem with his glock. i'm using the factory barrel, and don't shoot over a half a box without cleaning if using lead. paying careful attention to fired brass, i get rapid pressures fast, as evidenced by the cases bulging into the feed ramp...hence the need to go to aftermarket barrels to shoot a lot of lead.i was really surprised how fast the pressures rose,now i see where the hoopla about kabooms comes from!so, i didn't help you much, but i got practice typing...

[persistentprogrammer]

What about the speed of the firing pin. The primers need 'X' amount of PSI to ignite, but if the pin moves slow I think it will cause this issue.

[Mikey]

HappyHunter - are your failures to fire ocurring after the chamber gets dirty enough to hinder chambering - if so, the cartridge may not be fully chambered and although the primers how a substantial 'hit', the slide may not be fully closed enough to allow the firing pin to hit hard enough.

If you are attempting to make target loads for this pistol, try using a faster burning powder or use another powder or charge altogether - it sounds like your charges may be too light and you are getting either blowback or powder fouling early on.  

Just for validation's sake, and even though the barrel has been changed to one that will shoot cast bullets (and this I don't quite understand), try some jacketed bullets and different powder charges to see if you get any different results and work up the loads from there.  The 185s in that Glock might be too light..  Just a thought but I hope this helps.  Mikey.

[Dragon31]

MikeY:

I shoot 1000's of cast .45's in a Thompson Sub gun and 1911 every year.  What I've found, is powers in the burn range of Unique seem to work well with bulletts weighing over 200 gr.  Dirty barrels and chambers often come from not enough taper crimp being applied to the case (a strong bullet pull is necessary for a good clean burn and to keep the bullet from being pushed deep into the casing)  to much crimp and the case chambers to deep in the barrel.  Primer pockets need to be cleaned to seat the primer fully in primer pocket.  The case of the .45 will stretch after X amount of reloading and since the round head spaces off the case mouth it can get to long to chamber with the barrel in battery to fire properly in a 1911.
hope this gives some place to start looking

[HappyHunter]

Thanks guys,

The brass is roller sized and primer pockets have been reamed and are clean, the powder is AA #5 and is not a target load, altho it is not near max either.

The goal is to be able to shoot reloads rather than jacketed factoty.  

Mikey, good point about faster powder I will check into that.

Fred

[Slim Chance]

Look at the shoulder of the bullet that didn't fire. The previous empty case may have hit it on the way rearward. This slows the slide down and the next round may not chamber fully. This will cause a failure to fire. Usually there is a mark in the shoulder of the cast bullet to indicate this.