WHEW! Close Call?

[Reshoot]

What do you mean by it "works"? I thought the longer you loaded a given recipe, the milder the pressure spike became until of course, the bullet ogive started to touch the rifling lands and caused the pressure to start spiking again.

Once upon a time . . . at the age of 63, I had to make a choice . . . give up shooting USPSA or turn to optics. (oh yeah, you're going to get the WHOLE story). Despite my eye doctors best efforts, and lenses, I reached a point where iron sights were impossible to use. I will note that in 1980 I lost vision in my left eye, I was born left handed and spent many months learning to shoot pistols and rifles right handed. Enough about that.

Gawd, talk about thread drift! But then, I am the OP

A bit over one year ago I decided to build an open gun, using one of my 40 caliber XDm's. After all, at the age of 64 I am never going to be a Max Michael anyhow. And, despite the fact a guy told me you have to be pretty much a gunsmith to build an open gun, and keep it running, I assembled the gun myself.

After THREE months of load development and spring testing I FINALLY had this gun running pretty good. It's a wonder I am not bald. The "spring thing" itself drove me nuts! After converting to 1911 style springs the situation improved but, 14# was too light and 15# too heavy.

In the end, the load I listed earlier, with an OAL of 1.118" and a 15# spring with one coil cut off keeps her running . . . aka "it just plain works". Well, I did have one fail to chamber in the last match. Had to rack the slide and move on.

In retrospect, I should have let Scott Springer do ALL the work