Issues With Norma Range & Training .38 Special FMJ

[JonInWA]

I assume you're familiar with the writings of Iowegan regarding the hammer step mods.

Yep, he's great. I got his IBOKs for both the Security Six and GP100. Elsewhere he gives a detailed discussion of the hammer step mods, but I'm reluctant to have additional work performed-at least at this point-when I suspect the primary causal factor is inherent to the primers/their manufacture/their QC (or lack thereof...).

I may discuss with Ruger/my gunsmith, but given the attention to detail he lavished on my GP100 when he performed the custom work on in in 1998, I'd be surprised if Chris Peters hadn't performed the step optimization; my gunsmith recently pointed out the beautiful subtle beveling he did on the hammer front edges, something I never noticed.

Best, Jon

[awp_101]

Could the firing pin rebound spring be getting wonky? Or the transfer bar dragging just enough to rob energy?

[paherne]

I've got 1k rounds of this stuff, so next range session, I will have to test it.

[Wonder9]

The Swiss-made Norma 9mm 124gr I bought in 2021 gave me trouble in two Gen5 G26s. I had a hard time believing was caused by Norma, but the poor QC reports keep coming in.

[4given]

I shot a box of 50 Norma Range & Training .38 Special FMJ with the brass primers through my M65-3 3" with no issues. Decapped and reloaded the brass with no issues as well.

[That Guy]

Our tiny little group has been using Norma 9mm these last few months in our training sessions, so I have shot and seen others shoot several hundred rounds of this ammo, about 1 thousand in total. Two PX4's and an Argentinian High Power clone have ran without issues. I've been meaning to do proper accuracy testing on paper but haven't managed to find the time for it, but at longer ranges I've felt like it has been easier to hit the half size steel target we use than previously when we used Sellier & Bellot ammo.

These are of course initial impressions only, but so far I've liked this ammo.

These are the 4 from the second box.

The firing pin impacts appear to be off center in that picture.

[WilsonCQB1911]

As an update, I'm starting to get to my slightly newer stash of Norma .38 with the gold primers. The silver primers were a constant headache. The first box of gold primers I shot a few months back had fewer misfires but I think I still had one. Today I fired two boxes with the gold primers and had zero issues. I was shooting my new Python 4" in DA.

So I've only had 1 misfire in 3 boxes with the gold primers, which are the newer batch. That's much improved over the older batch which would give me 2-3 misfires every box.

It's accurate and fairly clean too.

[Archer1440]

I've shot more Norma in the past 18 months than anything else, just under a thousand rounds of the .38 SPL in my Pythons, and close to 10K of 9mm 124 in my HK's, and have not had one single problem of any sort with it. Very clean and very accurate.

I don't reload 9mm, but if I did, I would figure out a way to deal with the primer hole thing- because the cases themselves are typically extremely clean after firing.