40 S&W and Lone Wolf Barrels

[OneQuikSix]

Good evening all,

I am pretty new at casting and have a few questions. I've reloaded several thousand rounds of Ranier copper jacketed LeadSafe bullets that shoot great in all my guns. I just purchased two new barrels from Lone Wolf for my Glock 23 and Glock 27 to allow me to shoot reloads with lead. I slugged both barrels and found them both to be exactly .400" at the widest parts. About a year ago, I cast some Lee 175gr tumble lube boolits and sized them to .401" using a Lee push-thru sizer. I'm still studying different types of lube, but my questions are mostly centered upon the reloading aspect of these boolits. Here's what I found...

1. In order for me to get the round to chamber in the Lone Wolf barrel, I had to really crimp the assembled round. I'm pretty sure crimping them this hard reduced the diameter of the boolits to much less than my .401" goal. I measured the case wall thickness of all brass before loading and it averages .014". I backed off on the crimp until the outside diameter of the round at the mouth of the cartridge is approximately .430". Basically, .430" minus the total thickness of the case .028" leaves the loaded bullet at roughly .402". In theory, assuming proper lube is applied, these boolits should perform pretty well (based on my understanding of ideal sizes). The only problem is, the rounds will not chamber in the new Lone Wolf barrels with much tighter tolerances.

2. I have ruled out any problems associated with the notorious Glock bulge at the bottom of once-fired cases. I resized all my test cases with great success using my Lee full-length sizing die. The resized empty cases fall nicely into the chamber whether I drop them in right-side-up or up-side-down. They make the nice "clink" sound when the case makes contact with the bottom of the chamber.

I've been reading a great deal on this site but have yet to read any solutions for this type of problem. Everyone describes in great detail how they cast their boolits and size them to an exact size. They describe how it is acceptable to shoot larger diameter boolits as they are cast. What I have yet to read is how people have loaded them into cases without squishing them to a smaller diameter by their reloading setups. For what it's worth, I couldn't get the above rounds to chamber into either factory Glock barrel either (without squishing them with my crimp die). I'm done rambling on my first post to this wonderful forum. I can't tell you all how much I appreciate the knowledge floating around here. Hopefully, my questions make sense and will be able to help myself and others in similar situations. Thanks again for any insight.

Chris

[Rico1950]

First off welcome to the forum!
What type of crimp die are you using? And what type of crimp? Hopefully a taper crimp. You want to crimp only to return the brass to specs .423" (a quick check in Lyman 49th Manual).

[OneQuikSix]

Thanks for the response. The dummy loads I assembled yesterday were seated and crimped using a RCBS carbide die. I'm 99.9% sure its a taper crimp die. Question about that number, 0.423". If the brass measures 0.423" at the case mouth with a boolit seated/crimped, and the wall of the case measures 0.014", then isn't my boolit being "squished" to a diameter of 0.395"? Like I said, I'm new at this casting thing so maybe I'm missing something. Thanks again for your reply.

Chris

[Doby45]

First, let me tell you that the Lone Wolf line of barrels have got to have the tightest chambers I have ever seen.. I actually sold my last one that I had in 40 and replaced it with a Storm Lake. What you can also do is get the chamber reamed to open it up a little bit and then you should be good to go. But if you try to smash your cartridge down enough to fit in the chamber your boolit is going to suffer and you are more than likely going to lead like crazy..

[OneQuikSix]

Thanks for the reply Doby. That was my thought exactly. I was just wondering what other people were doing to avoid the leading. Surely, I'm not the only one who wants to shoot lead out of a Glock. Is it common for others to ream out the chambers on their aftermarket barrels to shoot lead?

[Doby45]

For tight aftermarket barrels, yes. Or you get an aftermarket barrel that isn't as tight, such as a Storm Lake. I was generally displeased with the whole fit and finish of the LW barrels and the tighter chamber made it a deal breaker.

[ku4hx]

Call Lone Wolf and talk to Dan; one of the armorers. He polished the ramps and chambers and slightly reduced the "bump" where the feed ramp meets the chamber on two barrels: 40 S&W and 10mm Auto. They both function flawlessly now. The service was at no cost other than shipping to them and I used USPS at about $4/barrel I think; it's been about a year or so.

When I hold 40 S&W loaded round outside neck diameter to .421" with .401" bullets, and overall cartridge length to 1.125" with Lee's 175 TCL functioning has been 100% for several hundred rounds. Accuracy in my Glock 23 is outstanding.

[Shiloh]

My aftermarket .40 is a FAC, Federal Arms Corp, now defunct. Are the old FAC barrels now Storm Lake??

SHiloh

[Bwana]

What I have found with my Lone Wolf G23 40bbl and my G20 10mm and G20 40 conversion bbl is that the throats are very tight and you basically can not have any full diameter part of the bullet protruding past the end of the case. No big deal.
You should not experience any leading just from taper crimping the bullet as the vast majority of the rest of the bullet is still full diameter. I know I don't.

[9.3X62AL]

I can't speak to the LW chamber specs, but my Storm Lake barrel causes no issues with a light taper crimp applied to W-W and R-P cases using .401" boolits. OVER-APPLICATION of taper-crimp can cause the down-sizing of boolits as you are concerned about, but as stated above a proper taper crimp should not affect diameter of boolit base bands or rear areas of front drive bands.

I'm not at home, so I can't confirm case mouth wall thicknesses of my brass. .0125"-.013" is rattling around in my mind for 40 S&W, though. I'll say this--brass fired in the SL barrel is easier to run through a carbide sizer die than that run through the Glock OEM barrel, fired with the same load. My G-23 is a 3rd Generation example, and doesn't "guppy" brass--but it's a mite wider through the chamber than the SL barrel is.

[Doby45]

AL, you and I have the EXACT same configuration. Gen3 G23 with Storm Lake barrel and .401 boolits. I also get absolutely zero leading.

[9.3X62AL]

Yessir, it runs like water in a downspout, too! Lee 175 TC in 92/6/2 alloy, lubed with Javelina Alox. Nary a touch of leading.

[Doby45]

I have that one and just got the MiHec 402 Cramer. Haven't test my load with those yet. What is your pet load for that Lee 175?

[9.3X62AL]

4.7 grains of WW-231 matches my carry load very closely (W-W SXT 180 grain HP, about 915 FPS for either load). 4.0 grains of 231 will run the Glock fine, and give a light target load at 775 FPS. It won't reliably cycle the CZ-75B, though--that takes 4.2 grains minimum to run 100%. So, YMMV.

[Doby45]

I will have to try the 231 as I just got 4lbs of it. I have mainly been using Clays.

[OneQuikSix]

Thanks for all of the replies guys. I'm wondering if I should shoot a few of these "squished bullets" through the new LW barrel in my Glock 23 and see how bad the leading is? Theoretically, it should be awful. If it is, then at least I know I have to do something with the barrel. Can anyone think of any safety reasons (pressure reasons) I should not load some of these boolits over a very light charge to see what happens?

[truckmsl]

My new glock 35 Lone Wolf barrel has less chamber support at the feed ramp than the stock glock barrel by far. Rest of chamber is indeed tighter than stock. This is a different design from an earlier Lone wolf barrel I have for a glock 23. Both barrels had to be sent back to have the leade opened up to accept .401 boolits.

[bbs70]

I've had a Lone Wolf barrel in my Glock 22 for 2 years now.
No leading , no problem cycling after about 5000 rounds.
I shoot a Lee 175 g truncated cone boolit over 5.5 g of VV N340 and my Glock and I love it.
Just don't care for that little critter on the barrel.

[ghh3rd]

I cast the same 175gr boolit with WW+2% tin and size .401 for my Lone Wolf barrel. I have an issue with some rounds not fitting my case gage and although they drop into the chamber easily, I avoid using them. All of the ones that pass the gage test fly through the Lone Wolf without any leading.

If you open the chamber on the Lone Wolf, it seems as though you will start to get "glocked" brass again.

[OneQuikSix]

Today I loaded up some air cooled and water quenched. I used a Lee Factory Crimp die to get the things to fit in my LW barrel chamber. I loaded them very light for safety purposes. Hopefully, I'll get to try them out tomorrow. I'll report back my results.

[OneQuikSix]

Here is today's range report. First, I shot a few magazines of factory FMJ through my new LW barrel to ensure proper function and establish a baseline for accuracy. Let me tell you, this thing is way more accurate than me! Fit and function of the new barrel were perfect to this point. I disassembled everything and checked the barrel for any signs of fouling. Nothing unusual so far.

Next, I loaded five rounds of air-cooled 175grn Lee tumble lube boolits into the magazine. Due to the extremely short seating depth (read low COAL of 1.065"), I only charged the rounds with 3.0 grains of Bullseye. All five of these boolits were extremely accurate, experienced no tumbling, and were very mild to shoot due to the almost non-existent recoil. Upon disassembly, I again noted very little fouling of any sort in the barrel.

For my last experiment, I loaded five boolits from the same mold that were water quenched. These rounds shot every bit as accurate as the air-cooled variety. Again, no serious leading/fouling was detected in the barrel.

Some takeaways from this experiment... All boolits were cast using a Lee 175grn tumble lube six cavity mold. Using wheelweights, the weight as cast was pretty close to 175grns. All boolits were lubed with two light coats of Recluse's 45/45/10 alox/JPW/MS lube. On the reloading bench, I decided to "squish" the boolits using my Lee Factory Crimp Die in order to get them to fit the Lone Wolf chamber. As mentioned above, I had to really seat the boolits further than I have ever done before in order to get the headspace right in the chamber with the cast rounds.

These light loads were very fun to shoot. However, I'll either have to increase the charge or swap recoil springs for a lighter one. There were a number of rounds that were not ejected due to the very low pressure/charges. All rounds did feed perfectly though. I'm going to continue to shoot these squished boolits over the next few weeks and see what happens. I'll follow up with another report then.

[truckmsl]

If you open the chamber on the Lone Wolf, it seems as though you will start to get "glocked" brass again.

The only part of the chamber that gets opened up is the entrance into the leade area just in front of the rifling. This does not open up the chamber diameter, causing "glocked brass".

[exile]

I have a Storm Lake barrel for my Glock 26 and a Jarvis barrel for my Glock 17. While the Jarvis chamber is tighter than the Storm Lake, I have had none of the problems you have had with the Lone Wolf .40.

When I am loading .357 Sig cases, I screw in the sizing die until it touches the shell holder and then screw in another 1/2 turn. This is on advice from the guy at Lee, after the .357 Sig factory crimp die did nothing. This seems to work for me, maybe it will help you. I have not loaded many 40 S & W cases because the cartridge just does not interest me much and people seem to have nothing but problems with it.

For what it's worth, it seems that people on this forum have nothing but trouble with Lone Wolf barrels (I realize there are exceptions). I cringe every time I hear that someone has purchased another one. I guess to each his own.

exile

[Doby45]

The 357 SIG is a totally different animal. Due to the shape of the round it would pretty much chamber in anything short of an obstructed barrel. Traditional straight wall pistol cartridges have a harder time with a tight chamber because the mouth of the cartridge catches and jams against the feedramp. But I will agree about the LW stuff. I hated mine and it looked like it had been manufactured by a drunk beaver with carbide teeth.