Heavy 9mm boolits for shooting dueling tree

[sagebrush rebel]

I am building a dueling tree for my grandsons. We want to shoot it with 9mm's. The guns will be a AR9 with 16 inch barrel and a Springfield XDM. I have been told that we should shoot pretty heavy boolits. The targets are 3/8 inch AR500. They also suggest that the tree be angled at 20 degrees forward to avoid boolit splatter, which will make it harder to move the targets. Any ideas. Thanks Don

[kevin c]

I use 147's at 900 fps to reliably knock over 35# USPSA steel popper targets. That's using a G34 with a 5.3" barrel.

Many though, use 124's at 1050 to 1100 fps for their pistol caliber carbines for the same purpose.

[Winger Ed.]

If the plates swing freely, regular 124 or 147 gr. should do fine.

Part of the reason to angle it so the plates flop over to the other side and stay there,
instead of rebounding back, or stopping at a 90 degree angle from ya.

[sagebrush rebel]

What mold do you use for your 147 gr. boolits? What powder and how many grs. do you use? Thanks Don

[sigep1764]

Im using the Elco mold from NOE. Casts a 151-152 grain hollow point or a 158 grain RF with the different pins. Designed for short leads/throats. I load with 2.8 grains of Red Dot for nice soft shooting. It should have no problem with a dueling tree.

[tazman]

I second the NOE ELCO mold sigep1764 mentioned. I load it with AA7 to just below +P using the data that Accurate Arms provides on their web site. It works great for me.
My second choice would be the Lyman 358212 (148 grain round nose) but it can be difficult to find that mold.

[kevin c]

I use MP's 147 grain competition boolit with one lube groove (even though I HiTek them). It's a round nose. There's a thread about a proposed group buy rerun in the group buy forums [not the active group buy on a different, flat nosed competition boolit with two grooves]. I load over 3.2 grains of N320.

Again, that's a pistol load. It works in my PCC, but I don't shoot the carbine much, and my understanding is that most folks load other powders over the lighter 124's, ending up in the same velocity range.

[sagebrush rebel]

Anyone ever use the Lee 90326 or 90319 150 gr. 38 RN boolits sized down to shoot in the 9mm? Looks like to me this would be a cheap mold to use to get a heavy boolit.

[cwlongshot]

I agree a nice 147 is what your wanting!

CW

[gnostic]

I load the 120 grain TC Lee behind 3.6 grains of Titegroup out of a CZ75B. My bullets actually weight 124 grains and knock down the 35# plates reliably. The low recoil really lets me get on my game...

[Kenstone]

I am building a dueling tree for my grandsons. We want to shoot it with 9mm's. The guns will be a AR9 with 16 inch barrel and a Springfield XDM. I have been told that we should shoot pretty heavy boolits. The targets are 3/8 inch AR500. They also suggest that the tree be angled at 20 degrees forward to avoid boolit splatter, which will make it harder to move the targets. Any ideas. Thanks Don
I would concentrate on getting the dueling tree designed right 1st.

I recently built a center fire 6 paddle tree with a Paddle/tube kit I bought on-line.
I had built 2 trees before, but both were for 22LR, and had cut the top of the tubes at an angle before welding them to the tree and angled the tree forward.
The seller of the center fire kit assured me the angles on the tube were not needed, so I didn't do it.
Well he was WRONG, the paddles would pivot to the other side when hit but bounce back even with the lightest loads. [smilie=b:
I added adjustable foot extensions (4) to the base to allow increasing the forward lean, thinking that would stop the bouncing...NOT:-(

I ended up cutting angles on the top of the pivot tubes, actually more of a cam surface with a peak/point so the paddle could not stop anywhere except on the left or right and not hang-up behind the tree.
That was way more difficult to do with the tubes already welded to the tree.
just a heads up to save you some aggravation,
The angles/notches ended up looking like this:
241248
241249
The finished tree:
241250
:mrgreen:

[Froogal]

I also built a dueling tree. 115 grain in 9mm is sufficient to make it swing but does require a fairly direct hit.

[Petrol & Powder]

I've been using a dueling tree for years and have NO problems getting the plates to swing when using 115gr. 9mm bullets and any barrel over 4". The plates are heavy and rotate with any solid hit.

They also swing with decent speed when hit with 38 Special loads using 160ish bullets and a 4" barrel but the same load in a 2" snubnose doesn't always flip the plate.

The angle of the plate, the weight of the plate and the design of the hinge has some influence but there's nothing "weak" about a 115gr 9mm slug going 1100+ fps.

[Drew P]

I shoot em with a downloaded 147gr and they flip, barely. It’s about perfect actually. The 45acp whacks them too hard almost. Another thing you can do is use .250 plate instead of the .375. Because you’re using cast bullets, you don’t need the full strength of the 3/8 plate.
The 1/4” plates are significantly lighter too for portability.

[Blammer]

I have this one from NOE

http://noebulletmolds.com/NV/product_info.php?cPath=34_256&products_id=2026

and it shoots great in 9mm AR carbine and my Baretta 92

135gr bullet with blue dot, is a soft shooting hard hitter. :)

[tazman]

I have this one from NOE

http://noebulletmolds.com/NV/product_info.php?cPath=34_256&products_id=2026

and it shoots great in 9mm AR carbine and my Baretta 92

135gr bullet with blue dot, is a soft shooting hard hitter. :)

I have that one also. It feeds and shoots well in all my various 9mm handguns.

[Oily]

gsdelong still has a Lee six cavity Ranch Dog 135 RF listed in S&S

[CASTING MACHINE]

Maybe a file and some grease....

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

I bought a dueling tree about 20 years ago, The downward angle is adjustable, so it can be used with different pistol calibers and boolit weights.

[cwlongshot]

I like this one..

https://img.photobucket.com/albums/v465/CWLONGSHOT/Temp%20stuff/sporting%20pics/Bullets/Casting/Powder%20Coating/4FC7266B-AA93-4B51-8BE3-38F3814D761E_zpsougm8bsc.jpeg

Its a Lyman 147g BB

CW

[fredj338]

Dueling tree plates are pretty small so any full power 9mm, 115gr & up will move those. Where heavy bullets come into play is big pieces of steel, like 20# & up. Then mass is king for creating momentum & dwell time of the bullet on steel.