Thank you!

Hi, Thanks for for the info. My problem was. 032 excessive headspace. Once I removed the extractor and firing pin i could use a feeler Guage behind a sized case to measure. Machined up a new barrel out of a piece of barrel blank. Thanks to everyone for the help.

Great information shared. This needs to be edited and incorporated into the FAQ section. Hats off to all the contributors.

That is indeed a lot of "extra" space.
Thanks for reporting the "rest of the story".:rockon:

You are indeed fortunate to have welding skills and barreling skills. Makes life easier at time huh?

Every now and then, I venture to an indoor range to shoot a bit, sometimes a 9mmx19. My old stainless Luger tosses the brass upwards, then then hits the ceiling, and goes forward. So I scrounge off the floor(harder to do now)for previously shot empties to fill my loss, no more; no less.

On some of the pickups I notice, primer piercings and evidence of blowby. Always thought it was the off beat load or just the pressure of the particular vendor, which gave the appearance of being right hot.

I rarely hear of a firing pin protrusion being too long, other than maybe in heavily used surplus rifles.

I once was sent from Europe a German gage(said it was from a war time bunker) for checking firing pin protrusion, just two notches, one on each end, go/no go; with a bunch of stampings. As usual, firing pin protrusion has to be checked at times I suspect; not a new requirement by any means.

In some hindsighte, I started measuring some of my free pickup brass, some was pierced primers. Most of the sampling was heavily below the SAMMI headspace spec of 754/776. I am a little light on Luger headspacing numbers right now, or European or other control specs. But here in the states, it seems(just a few measured items) that the 9mm brass is on the short side. This shortness might be contributing to some of the observations of abbynormal fired brass. A good hot load(9mm is fairly high intensity) with a short case in a long chamber, might be somewhat harder on things. I think that the result of a fired round is more controlled if it does not jump around so much unrestrained.

0.032" is a pretty large gap of a breeched up 9mm(754/776), which I think is pretty generous as compared to the 30 Luger, which is 10 in SAMMI. Guess some war type weapons were pretty generous in that spec, just wanted it to run sorta speak, saving brass was not the main agenda, kinda like ots ammo.

I think I might be more pro-active in measuring my brass, I seem to loose attention to detail at times. It has been noted, and I tend to agree, the Luger in 9mm likes a bit of length on the reload, within said spec of the day of course.

Hope the new barrel works out good for you, nothing like doing things for yourself and the knowledge of such.

Rick W.

Hi, I found that when setting up the head space in the new barrel that I couldn't find a case that was on. 754". So used a case that was 0.750" and used a piece of paper as a feeler Guage as it is 0.004"thick. Shown in photo.
Perhaps Military Ammo has crimped primers to make up for the variations in head space, maybe a reasonable knowledgeable members may be able to let us know.

Here is what a firing pin protrusion gage looks like.
The white one is an original Kreighoff tool, and the strawed one my own mfg.
The U shape cut at the top of the original serves no purpose, except perhaps for fixturing during mfg.

The method of a piece of brass(empty case) and paper shim in your picture will give an erroneous measurement. Both materials are easily compressible.

No, crimped primers would not "make up" for headspace.
Military weapons would have correct head space, and if a problem developed, they would have been repaired.

To the comment above, on suitability of your make shift head space gage, while much better than nothing- a guy who can thread and turn a barrel can make a steel head space gage without problem.

Should be a quick and easy project, dimensions are to be found on line.