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Just loaded my 1st .38 Sp. I am no long time pro but not new at it either. Load .45 & .380 pistol for self & the wife & Mother respectively. Problem. About 60 for the 200 will not enter cylinder. No pattern to problem!!! Different brand brass. Some nickel some brass. Some at the mouth, other in middle, other at the base.

Sounds like you may have a problem with your resizing die.

It may not be resizing all the way down.

Did all this brass get shot through your pistol?
It may be the brass is oversized because of the gun that fired it.

It could be from bullet seating, are you not expanding the case mouth enough or, trying to crimp too much? Get a Lee Factory Crimp die it will smooth out any bulges from bullet seating and crimping.

longtooth wrote:Just loaded my 1st .38 Sp. I am no long time pro but not new at it either. Load .45 & .380 pistol for self & the wife & Mother respectively. Problem. About 60 for the 200 will not enter cylinder. No pattern to problem!!! Different brand brass. Some nickel some brass. Some at the mouth, other in middle, other at the base.

Longtooth,

I had a similar problem with the first batch of .40S&W that I loaded
lots of years ago. I believe the problem was a combo of not enough
belling of the mouth and ... something else, don't remember. It caused
the cases to get scrunched in different places; just a little, but enough
that they didn't chamber.

But I managed to "fix" the rounds that wouldn't chamber. I use Lee
dies and I took the decapping pin out of the sizing die and ran the loaded
rounds back through it. Squeezed them all down to where they would
chamber nicely. If you can do this with your die set without messing
up the loaded round dimensions you might want to give it a try.

Good luck, be careful.

Tom

As Tom and Mojo said, the most common causes are from incomplete resizing, or a bulge created when seating the bullet with insufficient belling of the case. The latter is far less common than incomplete resizing, and it happens more with cast bullets than with jacketed or copper plated bullets.

If it is incomplete resizing, it is common for the round to slide into the chamber fine, until it gets to the last 1/8" or so.

There are other far more rare causes, such as dirty or damaged dies that tend to crush or squash the case very slightly, making it hard to see with the naked eye, but enough to cause feeding problems.

Best of luck on your gremlin hunt!
Chas.

Thanks guys. The insufficent bell is going to be my 1st guess. I remember some of the bullets seating rather firmly. Also cast bullets. Will let you know.

Where in relationship to the case is the round sticking? Toward the mouth, or close to the rim?

Chas.

There is no pattern to the stick. Some at the mouth, some in the middle & some at the base. No clear cut majority anywhere.

longtooth wrote:There is no pattern to the stick. Some at the mouth, some in the middle & some at the base. No clear cut majority anywhere.

Well, I'm stumped. Let us know how this turns out.

Chas.