store bought fired brass?

[wheat]

I purchased several hundred 45 acp brass from a reputable? online source.  Many different brands.  Having trouble with shells chambering.  Most are fine, but if one shell doesn't fully chamber, it removes the purpose of a semi auto.  I'm fully sizing the cases, the cases are uniform in length,  coal is good, and the crimp is also good.  What am I missing? Not the gun either, same issue with other ones too.  Doesn't seem to matter the brand of brass.  Each brand may or may not be the culprit in the magazine.  Also, factory loads and reloads from other brass sources work fine.  

[nicholst55]

Perhaps the brass could benefit from a trip through a bulge buster? Or a trip to the recycler, if all else fails.

[pleadthe2nd]

Revolver or semi-auto? I have found the cylinder in my Revolver needs to be clean for rounds to fully seat, after a few cylinders of shooting, they get pretty sticky, and needs cleaned again, yes the cylinder has been honed to .452

[tullymars]

What size are the bullets in your reloads? A Lee factory crimp die usually cures my problems with mixed brass in 45 ACP.

[gnappi]

Maybe "Glocked" brass? 

Get a multi caliber case gage and test the ones that do not chamber.

[ridenshoot]

I have had good luck with the Lee Factory Crimp Die for my 45 ACP as well.

You might consider this alternative however:  www.midwayusa.com/product/1012827841?pid=572212

[bigbrowndog]

Chamber check the ones that do not fully chamber, without spending money on case gauge you simply remove the barrel from your gun and drop the rounds in. If it’s a 1911 the round should drop even with the hood on the barrel, the small extension at the top of the chamber. Range brass is cheap but you can get cases fired in loose chambers and the dies you used that previously gave good service can now not fully reduce the case properly. Sometimes adjusting the die to give maximum case coverage can correct this, other times it will not. A Lee “U” die is used by some competitors to reduce range brass back to normal dimensions. I use one in all my progressive machines when I’m loading large amounts of brass that have come from range pick up. Once I started that practice drop checking loaded rounds was no longer required.

Trapr

[Deleted]

Use your chambers as case gauges.
Sort your brass by headstamp. Likely by self quality control, you will figure it out. Lee makes a bulge buster tool that is handy for truing up cases. I found that a new set of Hornady dies fixed my range brass woes.

[contender]

I have been loading competition handloads for USPSA work since 1998. I started with the .45 acp. The best investment for this was a chamber check gauge. Often,, I'd find a round here & there that wouldn't pass the check. Never used them in competition. And since I have more than one semi-auto,, I discovered which guns would accept my "rejects" on the practice range. Yes,, you can bypass a check gauge with using just the barrel of the gun. (Never recommended to leave the gun assembled in testing live ammo like this.)

Often,, there is not perceivable or visual reason a round doesn't pass the check.

But sorting brass by mfg & such does help often.

I'm currently using a Ruger Super GP100 in 9mm that is very tight & won't accept any ammo not perfectly gauged. And even then,, with the cylinder open,, I check all moons when full to assure proper seating. I just run about 20 moons full in my gun, AFTER chamber checking,, and found 4 moons had a round each that caused a little binding. It's a process to assure the ammo doesn't cause a problem in a match. A case gauge is invaluable to me.

[gnappi]

There's more than a few things about gauges that I prefer over using the barrel.

Using a gauge I don't have to open the safe, I don't have to disassemble the gun, the gauge is or should be made to SAAMI standards, I don't have a fouled barrel to skew results (I may not clean after EVERY use) and with a gauge that has more than one chamber I can go through a whole box or more of ammo before a range trip or match. Lastly on rare occasion I have found that using a barrel putting the round in one way will pass but rotating the round and re-inserting it will fail.

The gauge doesn't have a ramp to skew results.

I also sometimes like using a gauge while I'm reloading if I'm heading out to the range or a match. Most have several chambers and as they come out of the press I put them in the gauge.

For around $25-$45 there's no reason not to have a gauge.

[bigbore5]

Made my own gauge for the 357 with a chamber reamer and cut the throats to match my guns'. I've had some long forward driving band bullets plunk in a regular gauge that hit the throats on a cylinder.

[markwell]

Sounds like Glock Bulged brass to me.....

[handloadingnotes]

If a bulge-buster (setup that pushes brass all the way through a sizing die instead of using a shell-holder to push/pull the case in and out) fixes the problem, then I recommend avoiding that product or seller, and finding one who pre-processes the brass through one of those base-resizing dies for you.

I’ve had good luck with Lightning Ammo’s “ready to load” stuff in the past. No disrespect to the seller you got the fired brass from - they represented it as once fired brass, for a fair price, and it’s what you got!

The reality is that some guns have giant chambers with big cutouts, and spit out empties that are too stretched out at the base for a regular sizing die to make them fit in another gun. It can be a really big problem if the brass is sourced from a range used by an agency that issues all Glocks!

It costs money to process the brass to fix this up, so you’ll pay more for sized brass. And you can absolutely save $$$ by gage-checking your brass and doing an extra pass with the bulge buster yourself. But the reason I recommend paying someone else to do this step is that it’s hard work with a simple presses, because the base of a case is made from thicker and harder brass. I’ve broken dies trying to base-size. But it’s much easier work with industrial machines. Same goes for cleaning and polishing the brass. Sure we can do it, but we can’t do it as efficiently as someone with an even bigger tumbler. I recorded how much extra time I spent doing culling, re-sizing, and cleaning (I’m embarrassed to say - a LOT longer than I expected!). Then I looked at the price difference between unprocessed and processed brass, and got a per-hour rate so much lower than minimum wage I never looked back. I still size and load brass from my guns, because I don’t have to be as careful with the sizing to make it fit back into the same chamber. And because it just feels right to re-use my stuff - it’s not all about what the numbers say!

Anyway, for this reason I’ve also stopped buying used 38spl/357 brass unless it’s a criminally good deal! I can’t use a bulge buster on rimmed cases, and the number of cases I had to cull because of sloppy chambers was just too high!

Good luck!

[Encore64]

A Lee Undersized Sizer Die will likely cure that problem.

[ideal]

Have you tried seeing how the cases fit the chamber after sizing, but before loading the case? If the sized case fits you likely have a different issue than the case quality. This would make it a lot easier for you to start your troubleshooting. It would help us if you could tell us what bullets you're using, and if they're cast the sized diameter.

Thanks!