Springfield XD jam question

I have an older Springfield XD45 with a 5 inch barrel.  With Ball ammo it has been a very reliable gun (it does not like button nose wadcutters) yesterday I was shooting it with reloaded 230 grain FMJ ammo with 5 grains of bullseye.  I have shot 100's of these with no issue but this time I had a jam where the round chambered but the slide a did not go all the way forward and the striker did not cock.  I dropped the mag and tried to pull the slide back but it was stuck pretty tight.  Eventually I got the slide back and the offending round out of the gun.  There was a small scratch on the primer at the edge of the primer.  I fired another round then loaded the offending round in the mag and it chambered and fired just fine.  I fired another 10 rounds through the gun with no issues but am still wondering what caused the problem. I am assuming it was ammo related but on most semi autos that I have shot any jams have been stovepipes or jams on the ejection cycle of the firing.  Anyway any thoughts would be appriciated.

The couple times that this has happened to me it came down to a chunk of crud on the round or in the chamber.

First off, I had one of these for a while and my experience was just like yours.  230 gr. Ball ammo is very reliable but most other lead reloads would jam in one way or another.  I had a jam similar to what you describe with a different XDm in 9mm. The chamber of that gun I think is a bit short and I once had the gun tied up so bad I didn’t think I’d get the slide open.  Once I was able to get it apart, I took the barrel out and checked the ammo by dropping it into the chamber.  All of my ammo that was recently loaded was too long for this gun.  Most worked but that one particular round was the breaking point.  In your case, I would wonder if either that one round was out of spec or, as Steve suggested, it had some debris or damage to the bullet that caused it to hang up.  

John

John Dervis wrote:First off, I had one of these for a while and my experience was just like yours.  230 gr. Ball ammo is very reliable but most other lead reloads would jam in one way or another.  I had a jam similar to what you describe with a different XDm in 9mm. The chamber of that gun I think is a bit short and I once had the gun tied up so bad I didn’t think I’d get the slide open.  Once I was able to get it apart, I took the barrel out and checked the ammo by dropping it into the chamber.  All of my ammo that was recently loaded was too long for this gun.  Most worked but that one particular round was the breaking point.  In your case, I would wonder if either that one round was out of spec or, as Steve suggested, it had some debris or damage to the bullet that caused it to hang up.  

John

Long round , dirty chamber or light charge is my guess. Sounds like the slide did not recoil sufficiently to go back into battery and reset the striker.

Thanks for all the replies I suspect it was either a round with a slightly bulged gas or just dirt.  I had not cleaned the gun for several hundred rounds and Bullseye is not the cleanest powder.  When cleaning the gun I did a plunk test with the offending ammo and it does what it is supposed to.  I also think the gun was a bit drier than it should have been and after cleaning it I lightly oiled the various sliding parts.