pay attention to details with the 9mm

[landers]

Well as many on here I have struggled with cast boolits in the 9mm, until today. I read all the threads I could about the 9mm and followed all the procedures like slugging the barrel, pulling and checking loaded bullets for swaging ect ect. I still had key holes, leading, and patterns vs groups. Yesterday while discussing all of this with my father, who is a die hard revolve man by the way, all I was doing was reconfirming his opinion about both the 9mm cartridge and autos. In this discussion I showed him the C&H expander die I was using to keep bullets from being swaged down. He was looking at it and commented that he didn't see how it would really help since it was a lot shorter than the boolits I was loading and that if a 9mm had a tapered case this die wouldn't be of any help. Completely annoyed by his distain for 9mm's and continued comments that he never has these problems with his .38 revolver I took a look at the die completely prepared to show him a thing or two and re-explain how it worked. I stared at it speechlessly thinking to myself, wow that does look awfully short. The light bulb in my head clicked, I grabbed my .380 die set ad went strait to the expander, yep I had from the very beginning inadvertently got them mixed up as I was starting my research and doing all of my measurements before I started reloading. Today I was off to the range with my newly loaded 9mm's using the correct die, it was like magic, 2" groups at 20 yard, no leading, no key holes, just a great day shooting my boolits from a 9mm. This really drove home the importance of details in this hobby, how important boolit fit is and that my dad still knows more than I do, whether he realizes it or not. Thanks dad for helping solve a problem I could not!

[David2011]

Very cool. Congrats.

David

[GRUMPA]

Glad you were able to get things solved, and with good results. When I load 9mm the first thing I grab is my 357mag case expander, never did have a problem..

[sawzall]

Glad you were able to get things solved, and with good results. When I load 9mm the first thing I grab is my 357mag case expander, never did have a problem..

I do the same, I have the RCBS Cowboy dies in 357 and use the expander for all of my cast 35 caliber loading, 9mm, 38 / 357, 35 Remington, and 358 Winchester. Works great.

[bedbugbilly]

Congrats on getting it figured out. Don't feel bad . . . it can happen to anybody! Those dies look a lot alike and it's easy enough to get them mixed up. I load on a Lee 4 hole classic turret so I have my separate die sets on separate turret plates. Even so, I have to be careful and double check. I finally went to labeling the turret plates with a felt pen so I wouldn't get the 9mm screwed up with the .380 and the two turret plates I have set up for 38 Colt Short and 38 Colt Long.

I consider myself very lucky that I've never had a problem with the 9mm. I use the 4 die Lee set and several boolit designs for my 9. But, I did a lot of reading, asked a lot of questions and thought each step out when setting up my dies. One trick that I picked up on here ws to switch out the expander plug for cast and it's worked great.

Glad yours is shooting good now and now that you have it figured out, you can enjoy it! Good luck and have fun!

[Rolling Stone]

Glad you were able to get things solved, and with good results. When I load 9mm the first thing I grab is my 357mag case expander, never did have a problem..
I did this very thing and had a problem. It may be, that Star dies are a different length than others but the expander or bell part of the die was to far up, or there was to much die below the bell and the die would push out the primer before opening the neck for the cast bullet. I had to take 1/4" off the end so this didn't happen. I think it was from the case getting thicker the farther down you go and trapping air that pushed the primer out of the pocket. Like I say, maybe Star is the only one this happens with. Just watch out.