New Guy, 450 No2, Marrakai,

Tried New Guy's technique this afternoon with some fired Fed plated brass and I have to say that the feeding went alot better than the other day just pushing the rounds into the chambers. I figured the fired brass would be a tougher test than factory fresh rounds and it was, I think, if for no other reason than that they don't weigh near as much and thus don't have the same momentum when you try to send them home.

With your technique most of the time the case slid into the chamber with a little bit of effort and a slight snap which let you know it when home. I tried about a half dozen different cases and tried each in each chamber. Most tries with all but one case went home smoothly in either chamber, occasionally a bit of easy extra effort was required, as 450 NO2 suggested - no big deal and you could do it blind, without looking.

One case hung up every time in both chambers. The blade jammed on the belt twice hard enough to get me to poke it out with a cleaning rod rather than try to force anything. This never happened with the new ammo I was shooting; and only once every 20 or 30 tries did the rounds resist my earlier less skilful attemps to send them home.

Curiosity got me to try to chamber a live round, something I'm loath to do at home. So I sent the round past the belt in each barrel without closing the breach. No problems with the technique. In fact noticed that when dropped vertically the round went home on its own.

This has me thinking that by chambering every fresh round a couple of times in each chamber and "discarding" the difficult to seat rounds (no different than running each cartridge through the action of a bolt rifle intended for DG), in combination with New Guy's technique and 450 NO2's gentle thumb preasure that the reliability of the feed will skyrocket. The procedure is not awkward or too time consuming. In fact with a little drill it could easily become second nature.

I'm looking forward to trying this out when I shoot later this week. I'll report back how things go on a new thread.

Many thanks,

JPK