Looking for casting and load development recommendations for 9mm auto

[Andy]

Post edited: was having problems with bullets getting stuck in seating/crimping die but it was a result of me not following the set-up instructions correctly. Went through them step by step and everything is working fine now. I was letting one part of the die turn when adjusting another and should have been holding it steady. My no primer/powder sample rounds are within size specs and I should be able to shoot a few test rounds within the next few days.

[Low Budget Shooter]

Andy, good to see another man getting into reloading. I had a number of trial-and-error experiences even after reading alot of the good info on this board. I just didn't understand until I had tried it. Then the advice made sense and I was able to make corrections and work it all out. One of the keys for me was the Lee .38 S&W expander insert mentioned above. That was just a few dollars, and made it all work.

[tazman]

One of the most important things for me was seating the boolit then taper crimping as a separate step. This allows you to seat the boolit easily without scraping the side with the case mouth during the last bit of seating/crimping. You usually also get a better, more consistent crimp which feeds better and increases accuracy.

[cpaspr]

I went with the Lee 356-120-TC mold. For me it drops boolits large enough to size to .358". My barrel slugged at .357". I'm shooting them out of a Ruger SR9c, using 4.5gr of Bullseye, or 5.5gr of Unique. The Bullseye gave slightly tighter groups, but I have more Unique available. We'll see when I get loading 9mm again.

Fishman's comment about the domestic brass is interesting. Herters brass is turning up quite a bit around here, and I ended up with about 140 of them in .45LC. The primer pockets all ended up needing to be deswaged, and their still a bit tight. I've heard they're made by S&B, and I'd already noticed that those tend to have tight pockets. So, for all my semi-auto rounds I'm now sorting out all the foreign stuff and oddballs. Standardizing on Winchester, Federal, Speer, Blazer and PMC. I've got enough of just those that I can sell/scrap the rest.

[FergusonTO35]

Andy, do you know what your chosen carry ammo actually clocks out of your pistol? Published velocities for both ammo and reloading data tend to be optimistic at best, fantasy at worst. My chrono tests have always shown that factory 9mm ball ammo is on average 100 fps slower than the factory claims out of a 3.5" barrel. The Lee 356-120-TC at 1000 fps or so should replicate the POI of just about any standard pressure 124 grain jacketed factory load with better accuracy and somewhat less recoil.

[Love Life]

I have reloaded the 9mm cartridge successfully for years for numerous handguns. 2 of those handguns being a Glock 17 with factory barrel and Glcok 26 with factory barrel.

I use COWW water quenched and sized to .357. I use either the RCBS 115gr or 124 gr RN bullet. I seat to 1.100, lube with speed green or Lotak Hard, crimp to specs, and call it a day. Using mixed HS brass I have found no need to use a M-Die for the 9mm.

[tazman]

I also water drop the boolits I cast for pistol use. I use Lee dies and only use the stock expander in the standard dies. Never had a problem with the boolits being swaged down unless I was seating way too deep in the case.
I tumble lube with White label X-lox or 45-45-10.
I just don't get leading any more since I started sizing to .358. I got a little bit when sizing at .357 which is what my barrel slugs measure.

[MtGun44]

The functional heart of an M-die is an oversized, stepped expander button. The intent is
to ensure that a boolit is not shaved - for rifle ammo, loaded with the pull-through expanders
so commonly used for bottle necked cartridges. These dies left zero flare, so boolits were
shaved when seated and likely too tight necks for softer boolits as compared to bullets.

So - the M-type expander make the necks looser than for jbullets and add a small section of
oversized expansion at the front to the case - just larger than the boolit to eliminate shaving.

For a bottlenecked rifle cartridge, this makes perfect sense. For a tapered pistol
cartridge (9mm) to be run through a semi-auto - it seems to make a bunch less sense unless
you show by testing that your cases are sizing down your boolits as they are seated.
If this is not happening - I see no need for this kind of expander. Pistol expanders already
flare the case mouth, so the stepped section isn't an improvement, and the looser neck
tension may be dangerous.

Bill

[Andy]

I finally have an update to offer, as with most things this took a lot longer to actually get done than I had planned. The brass I had planned to load "the next day" was military crimped, which I didn't know at the time, so I had to get the tool to remove that and then realized I was missing some key components for general reloading, so here we are a few months later. Christmas was good to me though and I've got everything I need now.

I'll try to list all the major points that have happened since the last post since it has been a while
- Purchased the Lee 6 cavity 120-tc mold
- Cast about 250 good bullets out of it with COWW+2% tin (culled about 50% of my first batches while I was learning)
- ~200 of those were air cooled, ~30 water dropped (cast in october)
- Got about 300 mixed once-fired polished brass from a friend, which I've sorted by headstamp
- Borrowed a lyman 450 lubesizer with a .358 die
- Sized all bullets (dropped from the mold at .358-.360) to .358 and lubed with 50/50
- Built a reloading stand to get the operation up to a comfortable height off my bench

So, tonight I finally got some rounds loaded. I did all the case prep ahead of time and then had a friend who reloads guide me through the powder/seating steps for the 10 rounds I was doing (5 each minimum loads for two kinds of brass). I wanted to have someone there to make sure I didn't do anything foolish since this is my first time using any reloading equipment. We got my powder measure set up and triple checked it, and used that for this batch.

Using AA #5 for this at the lyman cast bullet #4 edition starting load(didn't want to start off with something with such a narrow window like bullseye, I'll try that once I'm more experienced), COAL was 1.170-1.171

I used the M-die for case expansion and tested the crimp by hand to see if I could move the bullet and wasn't able to, I'll do a basic test in the magazine tomorrow to see if the first four shots cause the last round to shorten.

I was given a chronograph for Christmas so if everything works out I should have a range report tomorrow and maybe even chrono data if all the stars align.

[MtGun44]

Good luck. Looking fwd to the report.

You did verify that the rounds would chamber freely, right?

Bill

[tazman]

I am also looking forward to the report. It is always good to see someone new get off to a start.

[Gunslingerdoc]

Lee 6 cavity is a must. I Use the 124gr rn tumble lube bullet. I found with wheel weights they cast close to sized so unless you really want the most accurate boolits you don't have to size them (verify this yourself please). On a budget, a guy could cast, tumble lube with lee's lube (larger cheaper quantities available on eBay or mix with johnsons paste wax) load and shoot.

a better solution would be read up on non spray methods of using powder coat (PC) and powder coat your boolits rather than lubing them. This will require a bit more time and $50-60 more in cost buying a Lee push thru sized and a toaster over. The benefit will be no leading, no lube smoke when firing and more consistent accuracy and no lube build up in your seating dies (this is almost enough benefit in and of itself if you load much)...and your boolits will be a cool color!

[Andy]

Ok, so here is the full range update:

Day 1: Fired a few test rounds (5 ea.) at the minimum powder load, then .1 grain higher, no indications of over-pressure, no issues with bullet setback in the magazine, no lube star

Day 2: Loaded for my first batch of trials: Loaded roughly 90 rounds of 10 different headstamps in 5-25 round lots, all otherwise identical loads. I'll repeat the specifics here: Win SP primers, Accurate #5 powder, lyman 49th edition starting load + .1 grain, Lee 120TC bullet (COWW +2% tin, air cooled, sized to .358) weighed in at an average of 116.5 gr, COAL of 1.068-1.069. Firing in a G33 (subcompact .357 sig) with a lone wolf 9mm conversion barrel. 15-20 degrees F out but I kept the bullets and gun warm until right before firing and kept the bullets in my heated truck until shooting that 5 rd batch (wanted to see the effect on lube). 50/50 nra lube from white label lube.

Results:
R-P brass: 25 rds, 942-1001 fps at 15 ft from muzzle, kept the exact same round in the bottom of the mag for all 24 other shots, no change to COAL in that round
WCC brass: 25 rds, 971-1028 fps, std. dev. 16.6, mean 989 (this is the only one I calculated that out for so far), decrimped this by hand with the $10 hornady tool, not worth the effort to do again unless I run out of other brass, found it was hard to remove a consistent amount of bevel.
FC brass: 5 rds (best accuracy group although I wasn't shooting well that day): 933-952 fps
.FC. brass: 5 rds, 964-979
9x19 LY 93 brass (chinese?): 5 rds, 962-978
9x19 CJ 92 brass (origin?): 4 rds, 3 readings lost, only reading I got was 957
NNY (russian?) brass: 5 rds, 931-946 fps
"9mm para 91" brass: 5 rds, 941-973 fps
PMC: 5 rds, 4 readings lost, 958 fps
WIN: 5 rds, one reading lost, 940-971 fps

I had very minor leading in the barrel after all this. I could live with it if it is the worst it got, but wouldn't mind finding a solution. Could not get a lube star on the barrel even with bullets fresh out of the warm car, warm gun, fired within seconds of removing them etc., so looking for recommendations on that. (Identical shooting conditions, same lube, same day with my .45 acp got a lube star after 5 shots). Accuracy was acceptable but nothing worth too many details or photos, I wasn't able to get comfortable with my shooting setup and kept thinking about trying not to shoot the chrony rods, going to move the chrony in closer next time. I'm not likely to actually hit it at 15 feet, but I think about it too much and it distracts me from proper shooting technique. Best groups were a couple 1.5" groups of 5 at 15 yards, worst were 4" at the same.

Have some water dropped bullets already loaded, to try out on a clean barrel and see if they affect leading positively.

Conclusions:

-Similar FPS from all brass types, with the WCC being the only one that was consistently a little higher than the rest. Small sample sizes here of course, but I'm leaning toward just grouping all brass but WCC into mixed brass and reloading it in batches. I'll save the WCC in case I ever run out of other brass or sell it. What do you guys think?

- All rounds cycled the action and I had zero FTF, FTE issues so nothing but good news there.

Also, I recovered one bullet from the soft pine log I was shooting into, absolutely no deformation, I could have loaded it again right there, not sure what to make of that.

Any thought on all of this are appreciated,
Andy

[tazman]

Your velocity is slightly under the book results but that would be because of barrel length. Since you are at starting loads, you have more velocity available if you wish.
From the groupings, it sounds like you have a winner.
Not certain whether the harder boolits will stop the leading but it is worth a try. Sometimes it works.
Keep up the good work.

[Andy]

Thanks tazman, I didn't know those were ok groups, that's good news. The barrel is 3.5" and the chrono was at at least 15', would that account for the velocity difference? My load has a .6 grain range from min to max and I'm at only +.1 now, so I have some room to go up later on for sure.

This is my first ever reloading effort so I'm going to keep a mid-range load as my max at least through the higher temps of summer, and to give myself more of a buffer in case I make minor mistakes. For the same reason I'm using the AA#5 on hand instead of the bullseye I have (for this and .45), since there is a little more room for error with it.

I'll be able to try the water dropped bullets for my next batch and I'll post back here as to whether or not it affects leading. I'll also shoot some "just for accuracy" groups with a more comfortable setup and without the chrony in the way and see what I can do when I'm focused on the target.

[FergusonTO35]

What kind of 9mm pistol are you shooting? If I were you I would bump up the charge to mid-range, which could help your lube to get out of the grooves and into the bore. Accurate number 5 is a great powder, very forgiving and easy on boolits.

[tazman]

The short barrel combined with the distance to the chronograph could account for the difference in velocity. It isn't really something to worry much about.
I would be more concerned with group size. You seem to be doing ok in that regard.

[Andy]

Ferguson, it is a glock 33 with a 9mm conversion barrel. 3.5" barrel.

I'm going to load up another 30 or so and shoot for accuracy (as well as trying the water cooled ones) and probably leave my powder charge where it is until mid-summer. It has been 15-20 degrees here at the range and can get up to 100 in the summer, so I want to leave room to not be over pressure in the summer heat. Does that seem reasonable to you guys, or am I being overcautious?

[FergusonTO35]

Sounds like a good plan to me. I bet the cold is making your boolit lube hard right now.What brand barrel do you have? I have Storm Lake in my Glock 19 and 26 and love it.

[tazman]

Go with your plan. You can always load heavier later. You might find the light loads to be super accurate.