Taurus Millennium G2 9mm cast bullets ???

[amc401]

Need help please! After reading probably 100 threads or so looking for help I have come to the conclusion that you all know way more than I will ever know and hopefully you will share your wisdom and experience with me.

I have tried about every option possible to get my cast bullets to shoot straight, they are key-holing at 20 yards with a 1 foot pattern (bench rest). Little leading but I only shot about 6 rounds before I quit after noticing the keyhole, then I would change the load (different size bullet and different lube ... etc) and try again. Jacketed, plated and factory loads all shoot fine.

This is what I have:
Taurus Millennium G2 - 9mm
3.2 inch barrel - (is a barrel this short that much harder to get cast bullets to shoot straight)
Slugged the barrel= .3581

This is what I tried at 20 yards:


Titegroup 3.5 grains, I have tried a little less and a little more


BHN = 13


NOE mold = TC 126 grain with OAL 1.030, the shorter bullet in the picture has a max OAL of .980" (I know this is short but its really the only way that bullet will fit the shell) I also tried different lengths in both the bullets, not much to work with though.


"Light" taper crimp with Dillon dies


Sized the bullets to .356 and .358 with both soft (50/50 LsStuff White Label Lube) and hard (Carnauba Red LsStuff)


Tomorrow I will try a harder BHN of 17, 19 and 21, I doubt this is the issue. I am running out of options fast.

Attachments:
The two bullets that I am shooting are NOE molds 110 Gr and 126 Gr
Its the dot in the middle of the target that I am shooting at, you can see the crazy pattern. The other dots were shot at using jacketed, plated and factory loads.
159594159597159598

[jcren]

First you need to size larger than .358. If you slug at .358, size at least .359. You may just shoot as cast to test. Assemble a finished round, then pull and measure the bullet. Often 9mm will squeeze the bullet inside the brass and you may even be shooting smaller than .356. If your mold won't cast .359 or bigger then you may try powder coating to increase size a couple thousandth. Check that and let us know a how things check out.

[Forrest r]

You might want to check your reloading dies, more specifically the expander die. Most of them are made to hold neck tension on .355 jacketed bullets and will swage/resize lead bullets down when their seated. Have you checked the diameter of any bullets that have been loaded/crimped then pulled. I have a cheap lee 9mm set and it was swaging the cast bullet bases down to .354 when I 1st tested them. I simply made a custom expander. Neo also sells custom expanders cheap. Or other people simply use 38spl expanders for their 9mm when loading .358 bullets.

I also have a g2, it slugged out @ .358. I shoot .356 bullets in mine that have been cast from nothing more than scrap range lead (around 10bhn) then powder coated. The g2 eats mihec 125gr hp's sized to .356 with a 5.5gr load of longshot like candy.

http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t242/forrestr-photo/9mmtaurus_zpsnlqcm8kg.jpg (http://s162.photobucket.com/user/forrestr-photo/media/9mmtaurus_zpsnlqcm8kg.jpg.html)

With the custom expander the .356 sized bullets stay .356. I also size the same bullet to use in the 38spl's/357's and size them to .358. I loaded a couple of them in 9mm cases and then pulled them and they measured .3575.

Perhaps other here can tell about their dillon setups.

Don't know if any of this helps but at least it's a place to start.

[amc401]

Hey thanks jcren and Forrest r, a couple of great ideas there. I measured them right from the cast and they are roughly .3595 and I shot a few this morning and unfortunately they are still key-holing, wild pattern. You all are right on the shell squeezing them down to less than what I sized them to. They weren't consistent on the size, the .358 were slightly under .356 and I don't have any of the .356's loaded so I haven't checked them but I bet it will be the same situation. I looked at the 38/357 expander/powder drop that I have and the nipple on it looks a little long so I may do some modifications or see if there is an expander made for what I need. I am excited to give that a try, it can do nothing but help. Great idea once again, stay tuned.

[walltube]

amc401,
You and another poster say your Brazilian pistol's barrel inner-tube measure .358+? Whoa! Something tells me you did not expect the Taurus to have a .3581 bore.

Boolits measuring a minimum .359 dia. may begin to show some accuracy. But then again, not.

9mm Para cases are designed to accept copper clad projectiles .355-.356 dia. Opening the 9mm case mouth to .359 to accept a .359+ cast boolit and then applying a taper crimp will assuredly squeeze the cast boolit, and case mouth, to 9mm +\- . Boolit fit is paramount. Case life will be short. 9mm brass will not long survive this repeated over size .359 to nominal .356-7 punishment when applying the 9mm taper crimp.

Maybe a .357 taper crimp designed for 38 Special-357 Mag .revolver boolits will render a bit of relief, then maybe not. Meaning, Ya'll will most probably never, IMHO, have a happy shooting experience with the Taurus and Cast Boolits.

That said, my favorite 9mm is a Tanfoglio EAA Witness small frame, which will fire .357 sized dia. Lyman 356402 poly coated boolits with nary a glitch. So also does the Glock 27 with an aftermarket 9mm Para barrel with a genuine .356 inner-tube. Not gloating mind you. Only to make Ya'll aware that there are obviously better choices available than the Taurus. No amount of lipstick on a pig.....well, Ya'll get my drift I'm sure.:mrgreen:

Wishing Ya'll a tighter group around the boolseye,
Wt.

[gnostic]

Some years ago, I tried loading 9mm for a local indoor range. When I dropped the bullseye powder charge, to where the gun would function at a minimum. The bullets started to keyhole at 50 feet.

[amc401]

Some years ago, I tried loading 9mm for a local indoor range. When I dropped the bullseye powder charge, to where the gun would function at a minimum. The bullets started to keyhole at 50 feet.

Yea, trying a different powder was another thought of mine. I think we are on to something with the shell squeezing the bullet. I am fortunate to have a brother in law thats a machinist and I am going to see if he will make me a few different size powder drop expander funnels for my Dillon 650. The original expander measures .353 and I was thinking if he could make 3 different sizes, .354, .355 and a .356. We will see though, thanks everyone for pitching in with ideas. I will definitely share the findings.

[edctexas]

when I was having keyholing problems with my 9mm pistols, I found that slightly slower powders than bullseye or Red Dot helped. What really solved the problem was fit. I needed 0.3585 dia. I have tried both 0.356 with PC to get that and 360 as cast sized to 0.358 and lubed. Both of these worked to stop the keyholing. I could not pin down what to do with the powder but I have settled on HP-38 or Green Dot for my two pistols.

Ed c

[runfiverun]

you might also want to look at your size die.
I switched from Dillon to LEE to gain a little more case diameter after sizing other wise my cases looked like they wanted to tip over after opening them up and seating the boolit.
I use one of my 38 special powder funnels I ground down to the appropriate length in place of my 9mm funnel.

the last Taurus I had not only wouldn't shoot cast well until I got over 358 but it wanted to shoot them lower and more to the right as it heated up the barrel.
I relegated it to a blow-up test and a return box to Taurus.
a 158 gr swc will feed and fire in a pt-92 btw it just won't do it too many times [3] on top of 4.sumthin grains of titegroup.

[amc401]

161222I had a friend of mine make me an expander/powder funnel for my Dillon 650 that was a little larger than the original and it works great. I fell victim to the brass compressing the lead to a size under what it should be. Thanks to others that chimed in and asked me to pull the bullet after it was seated and sure enough it squashed the lead bullet down from .358 to .356. I was surprised by that. So with the bigger expander the bullet measured .358 after pulling it. The factory expander measures .353 and I had one made to .356. I am going to try it tomorrow morning and will report back on the results.

[amc401]

Well, no luck with this go around. As you can see in the photo they are all over the target. Since my barrel slugs at .3581 I will get a .359 die and try that.

[Aunegl]

Have Taurus replace the barrel.

[Forrest r]

Actually I think you bullets are too hard for that light load of titegroup, even 13bhn seems allot for a starting load. Perhaps some strait ww (9bhn/10bhn) bullets would be better.

The only reason I'm getting away with that .002" undersized bullet in that taurus with the .358 bbl is because I'm using a 8bhn coated bullet and a 25,000cup load. You're using a 13bhn bullet and a 21,000cup load. My bullet/alloy will take 7000+psi less pressure to fully obturate in the bbl and my load is 4,000cup more than yours.

Either soften the alloy or bump the load up. The load you're using right now is in the 38spl p+ range and if you look around (do a search) you'll find that most people are using 9bhn/10bhn hp's in their hot 38psl loads (hot ='s 21,000cup) with excellent results.

You also might consider trying a slower burning powder like unique, aa#5, longshot, hp-38,etc.

For what it's worth. A .358 125gr bullet (8bhn/9bhn) shot in a .356 bbl with 5.0gr of wst. WST is next to titegroup on most burn rate charts.

http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t242/forrestr-photo/ro9mm50ft_zpslprjmumk.jpg (http://s162.photobucket.com/user/forrestr-photo/media/ro9mm50ft_zpslprjmumk.jpg.html)

[HangFireW8]

I'm with Forrest, harder is not the way to go, either hit the boolit with enough powder to get it to obturate, or go with a softer alloy.

BTW Taurus has been doing this oversized 9mm barrel thing for a long time. They need to hear from us until they fix the problem, but I don't hold my hopes up. I think it gets down to using the same tooling for revolver barrel rifling as for autos.

[amc401]

Well, I hate to say it but I am throwing in the towel. I had a larger shell expander made for my Dillon 650 to help alleviate the brass squeezing the lead down to a size smaller than desired. The expander I had made was .356 (factory/Dillon is .353) and I got a .359 sizing die for my lyman sizer. I loaded a round and pulled the bullet and it measured .357, so the brass is still squeezing it. I would just hate to go much more than .356 on the expander so I will stick with loading plated and jacketed bullets for this gun. Maybe I will come back to it one day soon. I also will call Taurus for giggles to see what they have to say about the barrel slugging at .3581. For now I will move on to the 45 ACP and see what I can do with it ... fun fun.

[runfiverun]

is the brass squeezing it or are you in the taper crimp station.
just making the flair flat again is all that's needed.

[dudel]

Have Taurus replace the barrel.

See his first post. "Jacketed, plated and factory loads all shoot fine."

[mdi]

You're not using a Lee FCD are you? They are notorious for swaging lead bulles...

[amc401]

runfiverun ... I don't believe I am squeezing it in the crimp station. I thought maybe in the beginning that I was so I would crimp it a little and then measure it where the bullet meets the mouth of the brass and I would keep doing that until the shell was straight in which it measured .380. I would even look at the loaded shell under a strong magnifying glass to make sure the crimp wasn't visually appearing to crimp inwards, therefore squeezing the lead bullet. While I was typing this I was thinking maybe what I should do is seat the bullet and then pull it before it goes to the crimping station and measure it at that point. Ha ... good idea, I will know for sure then. Also, my buddy who made the first shell expander asked me today how it worked and I said, it didn't, and he offered to make another one slightly larger, so here I go again. I will let you know how that turns out. So I guess I will have to pick up the towel after giving up 24 hours ago!

dudel ... yep, if I can't get this to work I will shoot the plated ones I load, they work great.

mdi ... Everything I am using is Dillon, thanks for the thought.

Stay tuned !!:cbpour:

[dudel]

dudel ... yep, if I can't get this to work I will shoot the plated ones I load, they work great.



I hear you AMC. Been there, done that. Not interested in having different batches of boolits of proper hardness, size, lube, etc for my G17, G19, G26 and G43; when plated works just fine in all of them. Or I can swap a Lone Wolf barrel into the 17, 19 and 26 and have some more leeway if I NEED to shoot lead.

For me, I'm in this to improve my shooting skills, not buy a bunch of molds, sizers, lubes, alloy, etc to find just the right combination for a particular gun. Some like that process; I don't. I find something that works well for the gun, I stick with it.

[amc401]

162175
Here are the bullets that I am shooting



162177
The shell expander on the right is the second one a buddy of mine made(the one on the left is a factory .353), the first one he made was .355 and this one is .360. You will see in the next photo that it is too big and the nose on the end isn't rounded or smooth enough which is causing the shell to bulge.



162178
The bulge , not good, so we went to plan "c". He rounded the edge a little more and took it down to .359 and after taking it through a few expanding stages everything worked out great. I started out with .353 and then the next stage I went to .355 and finally to .359, all on the same shell. So .... I seated a few bullets and pulled them ... Ha ... guess what? When I measured them they were .359, perfect, so off to the range I went today !



162179
I was so excited to see this. They hit straight, no tumbling, roughly 20 yards !!!!!!!



162180
Thanks for everyones help, your right, "Fit is King". My barrel slugged at .3581 and the bullets in the photo were sized to .359 and when they were pulled they stayed at .359 with a 13 BHN and soft lube. Now I need to do some tweaking and finalizing on the expanders but at least I know what my problem was. I did a lot of experimenting and many trips back and forth to the range but it was all worth it. I learned a ton and maybe this will help a few others.

[Javater]

You might want to check your reloading dies, more specifically the expander die. Most of them are made to hold neck tension on .355 jacketed bullets and will swage/resize lead bullets down when their seated. Have you checked the diameter of any bullets that have been loaded/crimped then pulled. I have a cheap lee 9mm set and it was swaging the cast bullet bases down to .354 when I 1st tested them. I simply made a custom expander. Neo also sells custom expanders cheap. Or other people simply use 38spl expanders for their 9mm when loading .358 bullets.

I also have a g2, it slugged out @ .358. I shoot .356 bullets in mine that have been cast from nothing more than scrap range lead (around 10bhn) then powder coated. The g2 eats mihec 125gr hp's sized to .356 with a 5.5gr load of longshot like candy.

http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t242/forrestr-photo/9mmtaurus_zpsnlqcm8kg.jpg (http://s162.photobucket.com/user/forrestr-photo/media/9mmtaurus_zpsnlqcm8kg.jpg.html)

With the custom expander the .356 sized bullets stay .356. I also size the same bullet to use in the 38spl's/357's and size them to .358. I loaded a couple of them in 9mm cases and then pulled them and they measured .3575.

Perhaps other here can tell about their dillon setups.

Don't know if any of this helps but at least it's a place to start.


How are the grouping with your 125g .356 load with your PT111 G2?
I am thinking if i might have to cast .359 like the OP....

[HeavyMetal]

try sorting you brass by Head stamp, then check for length, 9mm cases can and are all over the place in length even in the same 50 round box of factory Stuff.

nothing shorter than .750 same head stamp no mixed brass, try that next with no other change in the load!

Then only change one thing at a time!