Testing Guns With Your Actual Match Ammo...

[Alaskan454]

I recently experimented with hand seated vs. Dillon seated primers to see how much difference it made in my 625. It turns out there wasn't much advantage so I stopped tinkering and kept loading as I always did. At the time I also hand seated some 38 specials to test in a different gun but never got around to actually trying them, see a problem coming?

As luck would have it these are the rounds I decided to bring to a match last Saturday and the primers were seated too deep for the gun I shot. About 1/6 wouldn't go off in DA, so I ended up cocking every single shot just to finish the match. The gun ran 100% the day before with the same primers seated on my Dillon, but I had never tested any of the ammo I shot at the match. I won't be doing that again.

[Hi-Power Jack]

Amazing that Murphy' Law was correct, again

Hi-Power Jack's Law is that "Murphy is an optimist".

[motosapiens]

sounds like your actual mistake was shooting revolver. heh heh .

[MemphisMechanic]

This is the first time I've heard of an issue from primers that weren't too high!

[Craig N]

Sounds like your hammer might be getting worn a little.

[blaster113]

Its always good to run some of the actual match ammo through the gun in practice before using it in a big match. I got bitten by '14 Nationals match ammo that wouldn't chamber. Had to borrow ammo to finish the match.

[Alaskan454]

I've checked a bunch of different things between the gun that wouldn't light em off and a longer barreled version of the same. It comes right down to firing pin protrusion and my primers being too deep in the pocket. If I were using Federals they probably would have gone off, but the ones I shot that day were Remington. They had a visible primer hit but just didn't go bang, virtually all of them went off when I tried a second time. I wondered if maybe I had contaminated the primers somehow so I randomly grabbed some ammo from the same batch that was Dillon seated and they all went off just fine. I also grabbed about 50 rounds of every 38 bullet/powder/primer combo I had on hand and none of those had problems either. I can honestly say I've never heard of deep seated being a problem, usually it helps with ignition reliability.