How many times will you rechamber a round?

[camsdaddy]

With the recent shortage of ammo I think dry fire is as or more important than ever. I am still live firing but don't see my numbers being close to previous years. I am wondering how many times you do or could chamber a round before you expect set back? I have a few boxes of my carry load but have not seen any to replace so I will be shooting reloads and trying to make my carry ammo last. I have been very careful to slowly/softly chamber my carry rounds. For reference I am carrying a Glock 26 with 147 HST.

[Duelist]

I haven’t seen any setback with my G26 and HST. Usually, the cartridge case gets pretty beat up by the 5th or 6th reloading. But even more reloading than that, I still don’t see setback.

.380 in my G42, I will see setback in just two or three cycles.

If I know I’m going to do a lot of cycles of loading and unloading a round, I’ll default to HST or Gold Dot in my Glocks, but I usually just use a .38 instead in those cases.

I’ve been dryfiring my G19x and carrying the G26 when I carry a Glock, and just leave the little one loaded all the time. Saves on round cycling.

[mmc45414]

Another consideration might be that with 147g you benifit from a lot of engagement area between the case and bullet, I think setback is very unlikley.

This is probably one of those things that is not "Best Practices" but will probably not be a problem. I would inspect it every time. I would also probably always use the same round as long as it is not set back. Once it is chambered it is going to cycle.

Sent from my SM-G892A using Tapatalk

[SJC3081]

I rechamber alternately the top two rounds from my 17 and 43 at least 200 times. Every day I unload and reload the pistols. About once a year I fire off the rechambered rounds and start over. I very gently chamber the round from the magazine and control the slide and gently chamber the round. Speer GD 124+P.

[JonInWA]

It depends on the gun and the cartridge. For Glocks, Beretta 92, HK VP and P30 it's less of a concern, due to the more straight-line path from the magazine to the chamber, which is less abusive to the bullet seating in the cartridge. With 1911s, I carefully hand-seat the cartridge by riding the slide forward into battery for the first cartridge, which seems to help mitigate against the fairly abusive chambering process a 1911 bullet goes through in the chambering process. Interestingly, my .40 High Power seems to have a more direct chambering path than 1911s, with less set-back occurring-but I still use the controlled slide technique for chambering its first round too.

The exception to my Glocks is with .357 SIG cartridges-the .357 SIG bullet seems to be much more susceptible to set-back than any others in my Glocks. I use the same technique for chambering the first round of it as I do with my 1911s, and that seems to help decrease the onset of set-back.

Best, Jon

[FNFAN]

Potentially 3 times. A chambered round gets a sharpie mark on the case head when unloaded. If it has 2 marks it goes to the bottom of the mag and will only get rechambered when fired. We get new duty ammo issued yearly, so it’s not a problem. Kind of compunctive, I know, but I’ve seen bullet setback in .40 cal.

[deputyG23]

My work .40 Glock gets unloaded once a month minimum for cleaning and the occasional live fire session. Our service ammo gets shot up on yearly qualification day. I haven't noticed any issues.
Daily off duty carry .38 snub ammo gets shot up and changed in January.
Less frequently carried arms, such as my K Smiths and Glock 22, may get fresh rounds every two to three years, however, I noticed that the 158 +P LHP rounds in my belt pouch are from our last revolver duty ammo issue ca. 1989..

[Lost River]

My work .40 Glock gets unloaded once a month minimum for cleaning and the occasional live fire session. Our service ammo gets shot up on yearly qualification day. I haven't noticed any issues.
Daily off duty carry .38 snub ammo gets shot up and changed in January.
Less frequently carried arms, such as my K Smiths and Glock 22, may get fresh rounds every two to three years, however, I noticed that the 158 +P LHP rounds in my belt pouch are from our last revolver duty ammo issue ca. 1989..


In other words your revolver ammo in your pouch is probably older than half the Deputies working in the jail!

Sounds about right. LOL :cool:

[RJ]

Zero.

Just personal preference. "For me", my life and the lives of my loved ones is worth whatever it costs to put new hollowpoints in my carry pistol everytime. I am worried not only about potential set back, but also the multiple impacts chambering a round has on the primer cup (breech stripping the round off the mag, bullet nose striking feedramp, bullet hitting chamber, and the face of the breech hitting the chambered round.) I just put the used rounds in a 100 round plastic snap-lid box, and stripe them with black sharpie on the case. When I want to check a mag of carry ammo at the range for whatever reason, I use that once-chambered ammo. (Edit to add: all my once-chambered ammo has fired without issue the second time it was chambered. I use Federal HST or Speer Gold Dot.)

[BehindBlueI's]

Setback issues and primer issues are the two concerns with rechambering. I suppose the individual gun and how hard you let the slide go forward matter, as well as the type of ammunition. I'm more concerned with AR-15 rounds were the primer gets a little impact during chambering then I am my Glock. I am unaware of any testing on the matter, and I've asked people that I thought likely to have it. So I think we're largely left with guess work.

I have repeatedly cycled .40 S&W 180gr in a Sig P226 30 times and then fired it. I did this as a test. I no longer recall how many cartridges I tried, but it was a very small number. Maybe 5. Then I got bored. I try not to rechamber more then 4 times for a handgun, but that's not with any data behind it. Just feels.

[ER_STL]

Since I bought a second G19 for carry only, rechambering rounds isn't really an issue for me any more, as the gun stays in the holster as it is all the time. Years ago as a test I took a few of my then carry rounds (Ranger 127gr +P+), rechambered them dozens of times and then measured the OALs. There was no setback.

[blues]

I've never experienced any issues with re-chambered rounds with any Glocks to my recollection...dating back to the late 80's.

I generally avoid it as a policy these days, but have done so without incident.

[Sammy1]

Dept. armorer, I've seen many rounds with bullet setback in 357 Sig and 40S&W (Sig P229 & G22). Mostly the guys who load and unload every shift. I haven't seen any yet with our Gen 5 9mm but we've only had the guns for about eight months.

[WobblyPossum]

I once contacted Speer to ask their recommendation and was told they recommended carry ammo not be chambered more than twice. I figure they’re probably being conservative about that guidance and the actual accounts of rounds failing to fire I’ve heard have involved rounds that had been chambered dozens of times or more. I’ve settled on four times. Every time I unchamber a round of handgun ammo, I make a black sharpie mark on the case head. Then I unload my least-likely-to-be-needed duty magazine and load the newly marked round at the bottom. Rounds with four sharpie marks get set aside as practice ammo. So far I’ve never even been able to fill a magazine with rounds that have three sharpie marks because we shoot up our duty ammo and receive replacement ammo during some of our quals.

[revchuck38]

I field strip and lube my carry guns about monthly and fire them a couple of times a year, so the top round gets rechambered about 5-6 times, then shot. I've got twins of the carry guns that I do most of my shooting with. I think I go through a cylinderful of carry ammo in my revolvers yearly, just to remind myself what it feels like.

[HeavyDuty]

I have a little OAL gage I made for each of my carry loads - it’s just a piece of 0.040 styrene with a notch and the load name written in Sharpie. I check rounds against it before rechambering since setback is my biggest concern.

[Mark D]

Potentially 3 times. A chambered round gets a sharpie mark on the case head when unloaded. If it has 2 marks it goes to the bottom of the mag and will only get rechambered when fired. We get new duty ammo issued yearly, so it’s not a problem. Kind of compunctive, I know, but I’ve seen bullet setback in .40 cal.

I use a similar method, but the round gets 4 sharpie marks before going into the bottom of the mag, or alternatively, my range bag for use at my next live fire session. I'm using HKs and Glocks in 9mm if that makes any difference. Avoiding bullet setback is one reason I like to have a dedicated dryfire gun.

I recall that Aaron Cowan did a test on this issue. He also tested how many press checks it took to effect setback. If I recall correctly it took thousands of press checks to cause setback. Maybe someone with google-fu can find the article.

[ST911]

With the recent shortage of ammo I think dry fire is as or more important than ever. I am still live firing but don't see my numbers being close to previous years. I am wondering how many times you do or could chamber a round before you expect set back? I have a few boxes of my carry load but have not seen any to replace so I will be shooting reloads and trying to make my carry ammo last. I have been very careful to slowly/softly chamber my carry rounds. For reference I am carrying a Glock 26 with 147 HST.

2-4 or so. I have twin carry/training guns so I download very little.

This isn't as much of a thing as discussed, but it is a thing. Susceptibility also trends to some guns, loads, manufacturers, etc. As an example, one of the Speer GDSP 125s in 357 Auto would consistently visibly setback in G31/32/33 after 2-3 chamberings. The caliber in general was notorious for this. Some others I can't get to setback and get bored of trying. For those, the issue becomes damage/dislodge to the priming compound.

If you're concerned about setback, in each new batch of carry ammo sacrifice a few rounds to repetitive chambering and assess results.

And this is yet another reason to have ample supply of carry ammo around. Especially if you may need to admin handle guns a lot in this way.

[camsdaddy]

Lots of great feedback. I guess at this point I will try to avoid loading and unloading when possible. I may use my 19 for dry fire. When I go to the range I will just be careful and measure the round before I rechamber.

[jeep45238]

In my pistols, 4 times before they're at the bottom of the magazine.

In AR's (or anything with a floating pin), twice and they're at the bottom.



Having a training gun and a carry gun has a lot of benefits, from broken parts/optics, isolation of problems from your carry gun, reduction of admin handling of a hot gun, and not constantly chambering your carry ammo.

[RJ]

Having a training gun and a carry gun has a lot of benefits, from broken parts/optics, isolation of problems from your carry gun, reduction of admin handling of a hot gun, and not constantly chambering your carry ammo.

This is the way.

[Robinson]

Having a training gun and a carry gun has a lot of benefits, from broken parts/optics, isolation of problems from your carry gun, reduction of admin handling of a hot gun, and not constantly chambering your carry ammo.


This is the way.

What they said.

[MattyD380]

What's the primary risk with setback? Pressure increase, right? Due to less space in the cartridge case?

[revchuck38]

What's the primary risk with setback? Pressure increase, right? Due to less space in the cartridge case?

Yup.

[FNFAN]

This is the way.

Totally agree. I have a G19 with the same sights and backstrap as my issued G23 and it cuts out much admin handling of the work gun.

[M2CattleCo]

Gonna pile on with the buy more guns crowd.

I keep one to carry, one to shoot and a spare. Or two.;)

[jeep45238]

What's the primary risk with setback? Pressure increase, right? Due to less space in the cartridge case?

Also, if there's a chambering issue depending on failure mode (IE - bullet jams in top of barrel, slide on the case, out of battery) - the crimp could be damaged, which would decrease the accuracy of the cartridge if it didn't prevent proper chambering in the future.

And, there's another match on the 12th :-)

[Clusterfrack]

In my pistols, 4 times before they're at the bottom of the magazine.

In AR's (or anything with a floating pin), twice and they're at the bottom.



Having a training gun and a carry gun has a lot of benefits, from broken parts/optics, isolation of problems from your carry gun, reduction of admin handling of a hot gun, and not constantly chambering your carry ammo.

Second gun for practice! For all these reasons. And just to have a spare.

I tested setback in HST 147, and couldn’t get more than a few 1000’s after a lot of chambering. When the round starts looking beat up, it’s gone. I never put a chambered round into any carry magazine. If a round gets buggered by chambering, at least it’s either already chambered, or in the training ammo box.

[B0308]

FWIW, though I have at least one of every carry pistol, with a clone, I hadn't thought of using one for carry and one for training as I try to share the use.

To the question, rechambering is limited to 3, marked with a sharpie each time. There might be a 4 in the mix somewhere, but never a problem. Glocks and M&P's in 9mm & .45 and 1911's and now and then a Browning High Power 9mm. With AR's, no more than twice.

YMMV

[B0308]

Double post, sorry

[CleverNickname]

If the bullet has no setback compared to a round which hasn't been repeatedly chambered, the bullet's not loose in the case, and there's nothing else obviously wrong with the round like a loose primer, or a chip in the bullet or something, is there any reason why you couldn't re-chamber it an indefinite number of times?

That said, it's academic to me as I don't re-chamber a carry round more than a couple times before I shoot it, because I do the aforementioned carry gun/practice gun thing.

[Clusterfrack]

Depends on what you mean by "obviously wrong". If you have the time to do a thorough, close inspection of the round to determine if the case is undamaged, and there's no setback or other issues?

The case mouth and rim take a lot of abuse with each chambering--especially in some guns.


If the bullet has no setback compared to a round which hasn't been repeatedly chambered, the bullet's not loose in the case, and there's nothing else obviously wrong with the round like a loose primer, or a chip in the bullet or something, is there any reason why you couldn't re-chamber it an indefinite number of times?

That said, it's academic to me as I don't re-chamber a carry round more than a couple times before I shoot it, because I do the aforementioned carry gun/practice gun thing.

[jd950]

Mostly the guys who load and unload every shift.

Pardon my ignorance and minor thread hijack, but I was unaware this was the practice in any U.S. LE agency. I would be interested in hearing more about why this is done, whether in response here or in anew thread.

[JAD]

If the bullet has no setback compared to a round which hasn't been repeatedly chambered, the bullet's not loose in the case, and there's nothing else obviously wrong with the round like a loose primer, or a chip in the bullet or something, is there any reason why you couldn't re-chamber it an indefinite number of times?.

The primer compound and anvil can become dislodged.

[BehindBlueI's]

If the bullet has no setback compared to a round which hasn't been repeatedly chambered, the bullet's not loose in the case, and there's nothing else obviously wrong with the round like a loose primer, or a chip in the bullet or something, is there any reason why you couldn't re-chamber it an indefinite number of times?

That said, it's academic to me as I don't re-chamber a carry round more than a couple times before I shoot it, because I do the aforementioned carry gun/practice gun thing.


The primer compound and anvil can become dislodged.

JAD nailed it. There's no visual inspection that can see the internal issue of the compound becoming dislodged. There's a documented occurrence of an officer who's first round didn't fire due to that.

https://pistol-forum.com/showthread.php?3002-duty-ammo-failure-from-rechambering has a few from .mil and police, including HCM's post:


Received via another Agency. The incident occurred in September, 2011.

THE FOLLOWING TRAINING ADVISORY WAS FORWARDED FROM GWINETT COUNTY POLICE DEPARTMENT - LAWRENCEVILLE, GA

In September of this year a GCPD officer was involved in a situation which quickly became a use of deadly force incident. When the officer made the decision to use deadly force, the chambered round in his duty pistol did not fire. Fortunately, the officer used good tactics, remembered his training and cleared the malfunction, successfully ending the encounter.

The misfired round, which had a full firing pin strike, was collected and was later sent to the manufacturer for analysis. Their analysis showed the following: "...the cause of the misfire was determined to be from the primer mix being knocked out of the primer when the round was cycled through the
firearm multiple times". We also sent an additional 2,000 rounds of the Winchester 9mm duty ammunition to the manufacturer. All 2,000 rounds were successfully fired.

In discussions with the officer, we discovered that since he has small children at home, he unloads his duty weapon daily. His routine is to eject the
chambered round to store the weapon. Prior to returning to duty he chambers the top round in his primary magazine, then takes the previously ejected round and puts in back in the magazine. Those two rounds were repeatedly cycled and had been since duty ammunition was issued in February or March of 2011, resulting in as many as 100 chambering and extracting cycles. This caused an internal failure of the primer, not discernible by external inspection.

This advisory is to inform all sworn personnel that repeated cycling of duty rounds is to be avoided. As a reminder, when loading the weapon, load from the magazine and do not drop the round directly into the chamber. If an officer's only method of safe home storage is to unload the weapon, the Firearms Training Unit suggests that you unload an entire magazine and rotate those rounds. In addition, you should also rotate through all 3 duty magazines, so that all 52 duty rounds are cycled, not just a few rounds. A more practical method of home storage is probably to use a locked storage box.

FURTHER GUIDANCE :

The primer compound separation is a risk of repeatedly chambering the same round. The more common issue is bullet setback, which increases the chamber pressures often resulting in more negative effects.

SOD RECOMMENDATION:

In addition to following the guidance provided above of constantly rotating duty ammunition that is removed during the unloading/reloading of the weapon, training ammunition utilized during firearm sustainment and weapon manipulation drills, should also be discarded if it has been inserted into the chamber more than twice. This practice lessens the likelihood of a failure to fire or more catastrophic results

Now obviously there's a lot of gray area between "never" and "one hundred", but it eventually becomes an issue.

[LorenzoS]

Having a training gun to match each of my carry guns made this a non issue for me. Unloading my carry gun is infrequent enough that I can afford not to rechamber the round.

This is not directed at any individual here, but I humbly suggest that if anyone has a collection of different firearms but not matched training/duty pairs, perhaps reevaluating the prioritization of resources would be a good idea.

[Sammy1]

Pardon my ignorance and minor thread hijack, but I was unaware this was the practice in any U.S. LE agency. I would be interested in hearing more about why this is done, whether in response here or in anew thread.

Some officers unload their firearm at the end of every shift prior to storing it in their locker (very few take their firearm home). Some of this is training, who they had in the academy. I've seen people taught to load and unload every day, take magazines and pepper spray out of duty belt every day... and some it's drilled into their head that's illegal to store a loaded firearm. Really depends who they had for an instructor in the academy.

[FrankB]

I just ease the slide forward when reloading a carry round. Never had a problem, but I’ll fire the chambered round in once in a while at the range.

[Rex G]

When I was a young, underpaid street cop, I would re-chamber a few times, after careful inspection. Eighties Winchester 185-grain .45 ACP Silvertips, however, were so soft, that they rarely passed that inspection, even after just one chambering. I tended to keep Silvertips in the magazine, and the then-rare 200-grain Speer “flying ashtrays” in the chamber. (And, FMJ in the spare mags.) In the Nineties, I was able to find Federal Hydra-Shoks, and started making better money, to be able to load Hydra-Shoks into all of my carry mags.

Gradually, as I was able to afford to do so, I stopped re-chambering carry/duty ammo. If I ejected it, it went into a pocket, if applicable, and then was relegated to training ammo status.

Notably, however, I rarely ejected duty/carry ammo, from duty/carry auto-pistols. I kept my usual duty and carry weapons loaded. When entering a secure area, at a jail or lock-up, the guns went into a lockbox, and I kept the key. I tended to use the same handguns on and off the clock, so, they stayed loaded. When my son was young, I had a place to lock-up the weapons, as necessary, and the duty and carry guns stayed loaded, while locked-up.

At present, I am carrying revolvers, so, set-back, and deformation of hollow-point noses, is a non-issue. (Pandemic has limited training, and my long-stroke-DA revolving skills are least-perishable.)

[TheNewbie]

Some officers unload their firearm at the end of every shift prior to storing it in their locker (very few take their firearm home). Some of this is training, who they had in the academy. I've seen people taught to load and unload every day, take magazines and pepper spray out of duty belt every day... and some it's drilled into their head that's illegal to store a loaded firearm. Really depends who they had for an instructor in the academy.


Do they have weapons they do take home?

[Sammy1]

Do they have weapons they do take home?

No

[Clark Jackson]

My pistol self-defense ammo gets chambered ≤ 2 times. That being said, if I drop a round and it hits the ground it goes straight to the training pile.

Concur with BehindBlueI's on AR-pattern SD ammo: chamber only once and then into the training pile.

The concept of two (2) identical pistols for training and carry is solid - shout out to jeep45238 who hit it first in this thread I believe. I'm glad to see so many on this thread recommending it. There was a point in time where I thought that was overkill. Then i dropped a Glock slide while cleaning it and killed the slide. After that, two guns please and thank you. It has the added benefit of not requiring you to clear your weapon. If you store your training gun in a separate room and unloaded (I do) it adds an additional layer of security to dry fire over using your carry gun, IMHO.

[That Guy]

In AR's (or anything with a floating pin), twice and they're at the bottom.

I seem to recall that the recommended procedure is to never chamber duty ammunition more than once with an AR. Apparently, very few chamberings can cause reliability issues with primers - enough so that if you have a round that's chambered twice and is in a duty/defense magazine, it might be a bit iffy whether that round will go off when needed.

I can't find the thread here where this issue was discussed before, but I seem to recall some sort of advisory from a police department that had an issue with a duty round not firing after being chambered only a relatively few times. (I can find plenty of discussion on pistol calibers, but not the AR-specific discussion.) Hopefully someone has a better memory or better google-fu than me?