Hand Cycling Ammo in Semi Autos as a Means of Reliability Testing

Hand Cycling Ammo in Semi Autos as a Means of Reliability Testing

Friends, hand chambering a cartridge to check the feeding/cycling characteristics in a semi auto firearm is a waste of your time as cycling that slide by hand will not replicate the cycling and feeding characteristics of actually firing the gun……hand chambering tells you nothing except how the gun cycles any given ammo when hand chambering…….which means nothing about how the gun will cycle with that ammo when it is actually fired………never mind, you are probably ruining your ammo. Then, after hand chambering that poor cartridge multiple times and noticing it is getting shorter due to Bullet Set Back, (see our article about “bullet set back”)  I’ll get the nasty email telling me I do not know how to make proper ammo. The situation I’ve described above is purely user error and not the fault of the ammo or the pistol.

Actually firing the pistol in question with the very ammo in question is the only way to learn how that pistol will function with that ammo—there is no other way to know.

Good shooting and God bless,

Tim