I hate this part.  Had my 9mm loads dialed, at least 800 trouble free.
Shot a match yesterday, and had about 10% fail to feed.  Had some factory and it was flawless.
I’m going to go through everything on the 750, and replace the RCBS size die with a mighty armory sizer I picked up.
A casual look at the press last night, nothing looks like it has moved.
I swear that rollsizer looks better all the time, but I shot with a GM shooter who was singing the praises of his rollsizer and he had a stoppage too.

It probably has not moved. Are you using mixed brass? Same bullet? Do you case gauge every round? Did you gauge the rounds that did not feed?

I always use mixed brass. Same powder/primer/bullet as usual.

And no, I don’t gauge every round. I shoot way too much for that.
I usually spot check with the bbl.  When I pull that pistol apart I’ll be checking what’s left.

Not all brass is the same. You probably dialed in for a majority of the brass but not all that you are using.

The family and I shoot 20k in 9mm a year and I gauge every round. I use a gauge because we have way too different barrels.

You are correct.  I pick up all manner of brass at matches, maybe just bad luck yesterday but….ive been using all that mixed brass forever.  I’ll figure it out, I’m just too tired to mess with it today.

You have my respect, gauging 20k rounds.

Check COAL and crimp.

Did you check your mags?  All mags or?

I had the same thing happen to me. My Springfield lw champion has a tight chamber. Well, not tight but not sloppy. I started to get failure to feeds with it so I got a gauge.

I load on a single stage and eyeball every round. I can pick out the ones that need to get gauged.

If they're plump they get put in a bag for either my loaded or my m625

What exactly is happening with the failure to feed?

I shoot buckets of mixed brass too.  Gauge, confirm powder charge and oal... that's about all there is to it especially for pistol ammo.

I like a gauge a lot more than the "barrel plunk".  Also a hundred round gauge lets you do a lot real fast if you want to.

I’m not sure exactly what the stoppage was, I was on the clock and cleared them quickly.  Once I got into some factory ammo it ran fine.

I suppose I could have a bad mag, nah, it happened on a couple  different mags.  I’m going out to the range weekly and I’ll lock the issue down quick.

First I’m going to plunk all the remaining reloads.

On my 650, starting back in about 2008, for my 9mm, .40S&W, and .45ACP toolheads, I went with the Evolution Gun Works/Lee undersize die in station # 1.

Then station # 5 is the Lee Factory  Crimp Die.

After doing that, I no longer case gauged every round.

Hundo case gauge for the win!

I have the .002 undersize die, and was using it for a while.  It worked fine, Went back to the RCBS sizer, and it worked fine, till now. Might be nothing wrong with it.
I’m not totally sold on the undersize dies.  Yeah they work, but a standard one does too, and works the brass less.  And lube for sure going .002 under helps.  Definitely a tougher load stroke.

I am sold so far on the Lee FCD.

Been wanting to try this die anyway.

Attached File

I’ll dig in sometime soon, really nice weather coming up is going to prevent me from being indoors.  
I’ll update .  Just glad I didn’t load up 1k, only 250 and I burnt most of that up Saturday.   Probably 10% failed to feed…probably less. i think most were failures to fully chamber…yeah I had to smack the slide hard once to clear it.

Thanks for the tips and ideas!

FCD will likely help.

Had a discussion at the last match with someone and they were discussing thicker rims on some of the imported 9mm brass, don’t recall which brand.  So you might have picked that up, and increased the diameter of the cartridge just a bit, and caused the problem.  

(Keep in mind that if you do have some thicker casings, and you basically squeeze it down in an FCD, that you are also sizing the bullet itself as well, so accuracy may be effected.)

Also having a clean and properly lubed gun never hurts either.  When a gun is wasting some of its spring power grinding thru crud, it has less oomph to jam a cartridge into the chamber, especially if that cartridge is a bit bigger diameter than the rest.  Friction is not your friend…

I gauge every round. How much is a jam worth in a match.

For match loads, I might suggest all same headstamp, processed brass.

Use mixed range brass for practice. A roll sizer is great. However it does not compensate for the differences between different types of brass.

I load on a 1050 and can tell a huge difference between processed all one head stamp brass and a mixed five gallon bucket of range pickups.

YMMV.

Sorry, but that is a weak excuse. Case gauging will solve your problem and or show you that you have a problem. I can spend an evening reloading 1000 rounds and another hour case gauging. If your time is that valuable just shoot factory.

Case gauge is the answer you seek.  I had issues like you when I first moved to SC where my club has ALOT of 9mm Major shooters.  Started to case gauge and found at times I had 6 to 10 percent failures with the case gauge.  It was definitely a mixed brass issue.  I stopped picking up brass at USPSA matches and continue to case gauge.  I no longer have ammo issues, especially when I went from a Dillon 550 to a 1050!    Once in a while I'll have one that fails the gauge, but its maybe less then 1 percent.

I understand glocked brass or mixed brass picked up at ranges may have some 9MM brass used to load 9MM major or other overloaded rounds. But I have been loading on Dillon stuff since the mid 80's.  Yes I have generated what is termed Coke Bottle looking round especially in 45 and 9mm.  They all went off as expected.

I have transitioned from RCBS handgun dies on the dillon to Dillon handgun dies to Redding Pro Series dies.  I think the Titanium Carbide sizes easier.  The lone exception is that I use Dillon Carbide 357 Sig Dies.

I know a few guys that put a regular sizer in station 1 of the 650 and then use the U die in station 2 after they have moved the powder measure over to station 3.  One guy does it with 380 in particular.

The Lee Carbide Factory Crimp die is not meant to be used on bullets other than true jacketed bullets or say the Speer TMJ bullets which are a very heavy coating of copper jacket material.
The die swages the case and sizes the bullet to a smaller diameter ; this can promote leading or stripping of the plating or coating used on bullets.  Too many anal retentive reloaders......

Rollsizers are awesome and cut way back on those issues. However, a hundo case gauge is a better investment IMO (and I have both).

You'll actually catch the problems with the hundo gauge. The rollsizer will just cut them back in quantity. With the cost of 9mm being what it is to load, you'd have to throw away like 13k loaded rounds before it was "paid for."

And gauging them takes almost no time at all. In the time you can fill a primer tube, you can fill a case gauge and qc all of them. If you're moving fast, it's not that hard to load and check 1k in an hour, depending on your reloading setup.

When you say FTF, do you mean the bullet got caught up on the feed ramp or entered the chamber, but did not go into battery?

I am amazed!  

Tell me, what is your failure rate when using the gauge?  
What are the causes of the failures?  
How do you respond to the failures, do you adjust things or...?

I check all my loaded rounds. 9mm gets checked in 100 round batches. It’s all range pick up, I run around 2-3% failure to fit in the case gauge. They all have passed the barrel test from my 19X.

I’m using Dillon carbide dies, it seems like the bottom of the case needs sized more on the failed rounds.

Failures are 1%.

Failures are flipped primers, crushed/bent primers, high primers, deformed rims and split cases.

Flipped primers point to my Dillon RF100. It has a very time consuming adjustment process and only does well with a few brands of primers. My fingers just can't take hand loading any more than a few primer tubes.

Crushed/bent primers are poor mil crimp removal on my part.

High primers are again on me for not full stroking the press.

If I did have a failure to gauge or had a failure to chamber which is not evident I'd paint the entire reload with a black sharpie and run it through the gauge 5-10 time to pin point the problem. If the failure rate is 2% or above I'll first clean the die(s)  then reload 100 rounds and gauge. If I need a die adjustment it's usually an 1/8 to 1/4 turn of the sizer or crimp die.

The last time I adjusted any dies was when I switched from Precision Delta 124gr HP to RMR 124g TC. Ive use the same RMR 124g TC and 124g RN for 5 years. Before I switched to RMR I was using Precision Delta 124g HP and 124g RN.

I have a complete tool head for every bullet profile and a bunch of dummy rounds to resetup the press if necessary.

I know the provenance of every case I'm using. They were original factory fired by my family and I or friends. I'm working with about 5 headstamps not really sorted.

I use a Lee FCD.

For 9mm my sessions are a month long. I only reload in the garage in the winter from October through March.

I grease the my XL650 every 5K rounds. It just makes the whole process much easier.

I never wet tumble pistol cal. It's time consuming and my powder funnel hangs up on every drop. I've tried polishing the powder funnel and scuffing the powder funnel and nothing helps. I use corncob to clean cases.  

I tumble every loaded round in corncob before gauging.