kb58

I remember getting a brand new 1911 and being really excited to try it out. I mean, how could it not result in shooting out the 10 ring? I was brought back to earth when after emptying the mag, my brother said, "you realize that you didn't hit the paper even once." And that was just practice. I can't imagine starting an officially-timed stage with a new pistol - never mind the coffee.

I had a frustrating experience with my Dan Wesson PM9 jamming. Finally did a drop check of 300 rounds using the barrel and found that ~50 were slightly oversized. Figuring that I should be checking them the right way, I bought a Wilson chamber gauge, then for fun checked all the bad rounds again. Every single one of them fit the gauge just fine Apparently the chamber on the PM9 slightly intrudes into the acceptable size range for rounds (meaning that the chamber is slightly undersized, assuming of course that the Wilson chamber gauge is accurate.) An undersized chamber might be great for accuracy, but it's a pain because a given brand of 9 mm ammo - even if it's within spec - won't necessarily fit... So my point is, using anything other than the barrel for a gauge is no guaranty that the rounds will work flawlessly. Even if the chamber gauge is exactly accurate, it won't help you if the pistol camber is undersized.

I have a Wilson case gauge and checked my last batch of rounds, of which it filtered out a few... Then I tried all the rounds that passed in the barrel... which failed a whole bunch more of them. It bugs me how a Wilson chamber gauge can pass rounds that wouldn't fit the barrel. However, I suspect that it's not Wilson's fault, but an overly-tight chamber. Why a pistol manufacturer would make a chamber tighter than industry specs is beyond me (again, assuming that the Wilson gauge is correct.)