The BUG Jam

Last night's regular Thursday match at Winchester was a holstered BUG match. This was posted on the Cross Timbers forum the night before, but I didn't happen to read the forum until the morning of the match. However, I had the holster in my truck, the two magazines in my range bag (and one in the pistol) and I was able to adjust the tension on a CDP mag pouch to safely press it into service with the Kahr CW40 magazines, so I was able to compete as a BUG shooter!

I did ok overall, though I have definitely shot better scores with that pistol. I had a couple of misses and a procedural for which I am willing to say rushing was the root cause. In one stage, we were to take one shot at a target with the last round in the magazine (all pistols downloaded to 5 for all stages), proceed to cover, reload and place another shot on that target. Once I reloaded, I moved to the other targets in the stage. This earned me the procedural. I could have at least made up the missed shot and saved the additional 5 down, but by then I had forgotten about that target completely. :) Other misses and poor scores were due to generally rushing and some of the rushing was likely due to recovering from ammo jams.

I had at least three occasions, twice in the same stage, where ammo failed to go all the way into battery and a couple of times where the last cartridge was jammed into the chamber at unload and show clear.

As mentioned in an earlier post, I have had much of the last batches of ammo, 40s and 45's, have difficulties clearing through a case gauge. All of it has been BBI ammo. I do NOT fault the ammo. It simply takes a little extra care to ensure it is loaded correctly. The copper plated bullets I've used before were simply a little more forgiving.

I suspected that the slightly swollen heads of my used brass was most likely the only remaining issue. After having an ammo jam in the second stage I shot (Stage 1), I tried to purchase a box of factory ammo from the range, but they didn't have any 40S&W at the range and the Gallery store had already closed. So, for the rest of the match, I manually sorted ammo based on the visible bulge. The differences between them to the naked eye, at least my naked eye, were subtle, but I must have sorted well enough because the selected ammo did not jam.

I verified at home last night that slightly bulgy ammo that would stick in the chamber of the Kahr barrel would not stick in the Lone Wolf barrel for the Glock, which is why all the ammo worked well enough in the Glock the last time I shot it.

Since the last post, I have discovered and purchased the Lee Bulge Buster. This is an adapter sleeve and punch that allows you to use a Lee Factory Crimp die to resize the actual full length of a case. So that I can set this sizing operation up separately, I also got an inexpensive single stage press for it. While waiting for the horses to finish their breakfast this morning, I mounted the press and tried out this bulge buster. Visually, the processed case is straight and beautiful. Dimensionally, they are definitely smaller.

This is the same case in before and after pictures. The camera angles were chosen to accentuate the presence and absence of the visible bulge in the case.

One of the cool things about the way the bulge buster works is that it can process finished ammunition, which it will be doing very soon. :)