Blem bullets at Midsouth

[Hopalong]

Those bullets seated to the cannelure are 2.105 when I loaded that way. Had some FTF, too.

Hopalong-
Thanks for the measurement with your load. I asked because a previous post in this thread from three months ago gave a calculated COL of 2.05", and I was curious how that calculated COL compared with the actual. The COL from your post of 8 Dec was given as 2.175.

Did your failures to fire occur only with the cartridges with a COL of 2.175 as reported on 8 December, or did it also happen with the shorter cartridges with the 2.105 COL?

Thank you for checking and helping me keep things straight.
--Bob

Bob-

My 12/8 post was a different load entirely. The dimension I provided above is seated deeper, that is the COL when seated to the canellure, sorry for any confusion.

And I thought FTF was failure to feed, never had any that didn't go bang once they were in the chamber. But these shorter ones did have some feeding issues. The shorter ones were loaded with AA1680, unlike the loads from 12/8, and interestingly both loads (30 gr of Lil Gun and 38.5 grains of 1680) failed to lock open on the last round. I got a pretty wide spread on velocities with the 1680 and maybe the velocity variation had something to do with that as well.

Hope this clears it up...

Hop

[pitted bore]

Hopalong-
Thank you for helping dispel my confusion. I think I now understand a little better what's going on.

I've seen the acronym "FTF" take on different meanings when used in the context of firearms.

• It often means "face to face" when selling and buying firearms or especially hazmat components like powder and primers.
• It can mean "failure to feed", certainly. That didn't occur to me immediately, probably because my most-used 450B is a heavy bolt gun used as a single shot.
• FTF has been used to indicate "failure to fire", especially on some of the surplus rifle forums I read, where there are frequent failures to fire associated with old and unreliable surplus ammo.

Here's a link to a dictionary that lists about fifty different uses of FTF: FTF meanings. (In my defense, I'll note that "failure to fire" is ranked above "failure to feed".)

In the realm of Thumperdom, perhaps it should stand for "Feel The Force".

I really appreciate your efforts here.
--Bob

[Jim in Houston]

OK, need a recap. As I understand it, here are your loads for the 300 gr blems from Midsouth:

Powder: 31 gr Lil Gun
Primer: WSR
COL: 2.175

Note: These were not seated in the cannelure. When seated in the cannelure, the COL was 2.105; however, these failed to feed reliably.

Have I got that right?