Question regarding Speer Part Number: 53966 230gr GDHP

[Tokarev]

You get hardball performance...

At what point does a good quality modern JHP stop being a hollowpoint and turn into an FMJ? Five cycles? Ten?

I suppose that's entirely dependent on the brand/style/caliber. Best bet is probably to rotate carry ammo as soon as any sort of deformation becomes noticeable.

[Wayne Dobbs]

Tokarev, et. al.,

I can't tell you when feed ramp battering causes the bullet to stop opening, but there are lots more considerations on this whole topic to be thinking about.

To begin, you should load your pistol and then leave it the hell alone! The more you jack with a gun, the better your chances are to shoot it when you don't want to. Learn how to conduct a proper admin load (which is a whole other topic) and then keep the gun on you as much as possible and safely store it when it's not on you. That's the main reason we preach all this.

The other reasons to not be rechambering are:

1. You are battering the opening to the hollow point's cavity, thereby negatively changing its performance (already addressed).
2. You are breaking up the primer's ignition compound inside the primer cup by the breechface striking it during the feed/chamber/lock steps. This can and will give you a dud round in short order.
3. Other mechanisms are damaging your entire cartridge during this repetitive load/unload cycle: the magazine feed lips, the feed ramp, the chamber, the extractor, the ejector and the deck are ALL beating hell out of that round every time it's fed from a magazine to chamber and then removed by the unload. That beat up round can and will give a cycling malfunction due to the burrs and dimensional changes created.
4. You're also breaking the crimp seal and any environmental seal between the case mouth and bullet. This starts seating the bullet deeper and deeper and will create much higher chamber pressures and will also allow moisture to enter the cartridge, causing a dud round.

So, chamber a round once (perhaps twice maximum). After that, it's a round to be fired in practice. Doing otherwise is asking for trouble.

[WobblyPossum]

I'm following this thread with interest because 230gr Gold Dot is my issued duty load. I make it a practice to not chamber the same round of duty ammunition more than twice as @Wayne Dobbs said. After unchambering a round for the second time I toss it in the practice ammo box and replace it with a new round. I have never seen any of the hollow points form my rounds close up like this.

[DocGKR]

Wayne has given good advice--follow it!!!

Duty and defensive rounds get chambered.............ONE TIME.

This is NOT new info.

This has been discussed numerous times.

Why is this still an issue at the end of 2018?????

The LE ammo primer we give out has an entire page devoted to ammo care, which clearly states to not re-chamber duty or defensive rounds.

There is even a sticky note about this in the ammo section here at PF and at LF: "Once a round has been chambered, DO NOT RE-CHAMBER IT for duty use. Do NOT re-chamber it again, except for training. This is CRITICAL!!!"

[Robinson]

It's pretty easy to just toss a once-chambered round into the training ammo can, then top off your carry mag.

[DocGKR]

Yup....