Help reloading for my Glock 42 380 ACP

[the45er]

Decided to buy my wife and me a couple of 42's for CCL. They shoot great and since my wife, for the first time, is asking "can we go shoot", I thought I'd get a die set and load up some ammo. Guns both digest factory ammo flawlessly.

Well, I saved up some brass and bought a die set. I have successfully loaded 45 ACP and 40 S&W pistol rounds for a long time. I resize, flare the mouth, prime, powder (3.5 grains Unique under a 115 gr JHP). I seated the bullets so the OAL was .980" and factory crimped.

THEY WON'T FIRE AT ALL! And what's even more strange, there appears to be a very heavy primer strike - seems plenty deep to activate the primer. I took out the barrel and the bullets seem to drop in with ease, but could I not be fully resizing the brass?

I could use some advice here! Thanks.

 

[TailGator]

I can't think how a resizing problem would keep the primer from igniting. Have you used primers from this batch in other ammo successfully? As a first step in diagnosis, I might go out in the back yard, feed an otherwise empty primed case into the chamber, and listen for a pop on pulling the trigger. (Safe direction, like the dirt a few feet in front of you, of course.) A deep firing pin mark and no response is not computing for me unless the primers are bad or they are very badly seated, the latter of which probably isn't going to happen since you successfully load other calibers.

Uncle Nick, where are you, bro?

 

[Chainsaw.]

Tailgater has a good idea. To supplement I would restrike the primer a time or two be make sure the firing pin is hitting. Could be a set of hard/bad primers.

 

[Unclenick]

There are several possible causes. A deep indent can mean a good strike, but if the primer were incompletely seated, then a deep strike can simply mean the firing pin pushed the anvil out of the primer on the inside. It's not a good diagnostic tool unless you know the anvils were slightly compressed against the floor of the primer pocket, as they should be (at least 0.002" compressed). You can usually find high primers by feel, running your fingertip over the face of the case head. The primer should be at least 0.004" below flush in most cases.

High primers can result from seating into a tight primer pocket. Some foreign made brass seems to have pockets about a third of a thousandth of an inch narrower than SAAMI minimum diameter, probably due to some inch-metric conversion error, and this can make it hard enough to seat the primer that you think you pushed it in hard enough when you haven't. The solution is to ream or swage the primer pockets in such brass to US diameter specs.

Some primers are simply harder to ignite than others. Since they are the same size, it is also possible to place small rifle primers instead of small pistol primers into a small primer pocket, and they have thicker cups and often don't ignite properly with a standard handgun firing pin strike. Especially not if they are magnum small rifle primers, which have even thicker cups, generally.

If you can, acquire some Federal number 100 small pistol primers, as they will often go off when others won't in the same gun. This seems to be due to a combination of cup diameters that seat more easily than some others, and to having higher native ignition sensitivity (they use a form of lead styphnate sensitizer that is different than any other American makers currently use, AFAIK). Try those.

 

[rg1]

First use bullets recommended for .380 from 90-95 grains. Your 115 gr. bullets are too heavy and too long for .380. May be causing a chambering problem?

 

[FITASC]

First use bullets recommended for .380 from 90-95 grains. Your 115 gr. bullets are too heavy and too long for .380. .......

+1.....115 is for 9x19

 

[RC20]

Open up one of the guns, take the barrel off and put some rounds in the chamber (i.e drop test)

I can second Unclenick on non US primer pockets, have had to deal with that.

Its been a long time since I dealt with 380 but the bullets are 85 grains as I recall.

I don't know what you mean by factory crimped.

Only a factory can factory crimp.

I don't crimp pistol rounds in the seat die, I use separate and you need a taper crimp for the semi auto rounds and not to hard a one either. For 9mm I just get the flare off.

 

[kmw1954]

Normally load 9mm but am now also loading 380. I too believe 115gr bullet is pushing the useful limit even though I'm loading 100gr X-TREME plated bullets.

I too suspect the primers. Have you tried a second strike on any of these?