- Location
- Southwestern Ontario
I replaced the barrel in my beloved Springfield XD9 with a Storm Lake stainless unit. The accuracy went up dramatically and I was well pleased. But I started having feeding and extraction issues. I could not figure out why for the life of me. I tried different powders, projectile weights, projectile shapes, polishing the feed ramp to a mirror-like finish, nothing worked. I was just about at the end of my tether with this when I happened upon some factory S&B 124g factory loads. Magically, these shot beautifully with no misfeeds at all. I thought then if I could emulate the load I could duplicate the results, but of course S&B uses some kind of unlabelled bulk powder so that was out. I was looking at one of the S&B loads one day when it suddenly hit upon me to measure it: 1.166 across the board. I then sat down at my press and made up a selection of different cartridges with different projectile weights, shapes, and powders but all at or near max OAL. Off to the range.
They all shot beautifully. No hangs. I retested the shorter rounds in my bag and the jamming started again. Back to the max OAL rounds and my Springfield happily tore the heart out of several bullseyes that evening with nary a jam.
It seems my new Storm Lake barrel is more of a match type unit and has much closer spec tolerances closer to SAMMI than the stock barrel. Rounds loaded to a shorter OAL (below about 1.140 for semi-round nose). As the barrel tilts back to received the new round, a shorter ctg create a steeper entry angle and binds at the chamber or catches on the step between the frame section of the ramp and the barrel section. A longer round skips right over the step and enters the chamber at a shallower angle.
The devil, as always, is in the detail.
They all shot beautifully. No hangs. I retested the shorter rounds in my bag and the jamming started again. Back to the max OAL rounds and my Springfield happily tore the heart out of several bullseyes that evening with nary a jam.
It seems my new Storm Lake barrel is more of a match type unit and has much closer spec tolerances closer to SAMMI than the stock barrel. Rounds loaded to a shorter OAL (below about 1.140 for semi-round nose). As the barrel tilts back to received the new round, a shorter ctg create a steeper entry angle and binds at the chamber or catches on the step between the frame section of the ramp and the barrel section. A longer round skips right over the step and enters the chamber at a shallower angle.
The devil, as always, is in the detail.
