Lee 158-140g swc in a 9mm

[Manns50]

Ive searched this and read about attempts and some success stories. Will be sizing to 357 for for a sr9c. The barrel slug was a 355.5 and Ive shot 357's through it without any problems. Just unsure about the shape and length of this boolit. Any tips or success stories (or failures) would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Im a noob but have a good mentor lol.

[Manns50]

I have been told by Hodgdon that I should use Longshot powder or HS6. Unique would work too possibly...have been using Bullseye or clays for 115 and 125g rounds.

[Shiloh]

Both that boolit and the 105 gr. equivalent shoot well but don't cycle reliably.

Shiloh

[runfiverun]

i'd definitely work on the oal for feeding by making some dummy's first.
then once that is established the slower powders suggested would be a good choice to start load work up with.
the oal establishment gives you a specific case volume to work with and you can compare the volume you have with known bullet loads.

[Colorado4wheel]

Your main issue is OAL and it's related case volume. I have loaded a 125RNFP .357 Lee mold. It has to be very short to fit my KKM barrel. But it works. It would never work with a low volume powder but Unique would not fit with out some huge compression. I load my 9mm lead to 1.080 and the .357 is loaded a little shorter.

[Manns50]

Ok thanks for the help I will do that. How do I figure case volume?
Also I guess I look for a slower burning low case volume powder?
I will search these questions see what I can find

[Colorado4wheel]

I have a friend loading 160 gr in 9mm. Don't know if he had the throat opened up to fit but it works well with the fast powders we gamers like to use. He does load longer then me. My Lyman 147gr 9mm load was dropping at about 155gr. So I just used data from the Lyman manual and adjusted it down just a little. That mold has a bevel base which helps it to seat shorter with out an issue. Most big and heavy bullets seated too short start to bulge out the base of the brass a lot causing other issues.

[Shiloh]

Your main issue is OAL and it's related case volume. I have loaded a 125RNFP .357 Lee mold. It has to be very short to fit my KKM barrel. But it works. It would never work with a low volume powder but Unique would not fit with out some huge compression. I load my 9mm lead to 1.080 and the .357 is loaded a little shorter.

That boolit works very well for me. 1.06 OAL IIRC, and 4.5 gr Unique.

Shiloh

[fcvan]

While I haven't loaded the Lee 358-140 SWC in the 9mm, I have loaded the 358-105 SWC quite a bit. The profile of the boolit is the same, but the 140 is longer and has an additional lube groove.

To get the 105 SWC to feed well in the 9mm (and the .380, which is what I originally bought the mold for) I seated to where the case mouth was between the crimp groove and the front driving band. Any longer than that and I had feeding issues.

My preference would be a 358-140 TC with a single lube groove but Lee doesn't make such an animal. Heck, even a 358-140 RF would be cool. Sure, I could order a custom mold in any of those configurations but the molds I have now are filling the bill.

[Manns50]

Success so far...went over to the "seasoned" reloaders house and ended up with a round that cycled fine...3 consecutive rounds fired... in my SR9C for a quick test.Ended up seating the bullet farther in the case than I would have thought it looks as its setting on the powder. Don't think it's a compressed load but it has to be close. Going to do some more measurements today to see how close it actually is if its a huge concern.
The recipe I'm using is the Lee 140g swc sized to .357 with an oal of 1.017 using 4.0g of Hodgdon HS6. The bullet cast as .640 length.
The bullet has 3 grooves and its seating all 3 to the edge of the first groove.
Hodgdon's reccomendation from "using similar data" a 147g bullet when asked stated a starting point of 4.3-5.0 of HS6.