Casting for Glock17

[nueces5]

the problem is that I use a dillon 550, and I need a powder funnel
If I used a turret type press it would be easier to solve.
I'm going to try PC and see where the boolits go

[sigep1764]

Nueces, I think Gloob was suggesting a good alternative if you have a cheap single stage press to go along with your 550 if you cannot get the funnel you need. You can take the decapping/sizing die out of the 550 and put it on the single stage press and do all your decapping/sizing on that press. In the first station on the 550, you can put in a Lee expander for 9mm Makarov which would expand your brass mouth enough to not squeeze the boolit too small. The second station would basically just drop powder with the standard powder funnel in an already expanded brass case. It is a work around option if you cannot get the proper funnel.

[nueces5]

Thanks Sigep, the truth is that with the language jump I miss some things.
Today I sent a PM Lathesmith, so I hope I can buy the right expander.
Hernan

[sigep1764]

If he needs a funnel to copy, let me know and I will send him mine.

[P Flados]

FYI,

I did all of the other stuff, but feel that the oversize 9mm expander was the biggest single improvement that finally cured the primary problem. It took me several tries, but I found that going all the way to 0.358" was needed to get it to work.

It is a shame that the reloading equipment makers only seem to understand "normal" reloading. For handguns, the standard rules of thumb mostly come from reloading jacketed and cast in thin wall cases or jacket bullets only in the 9mm and smaller autos.

I am recommending that we do something about this. For example, I just sent a message to Dillon explaining the need for an oversized 9mm expander. If multiple bullet casters bombard the equipment makers with info, at least they will understand the need. The good ones will probably choose to do something about it.

[nueces5]

Mail storm

[gloob]

I think manufacturers have a liability issue. They will surely tend to make their stuff on the conservative side. Even my NOE plug is perfect only because 357 exists. And if you have a setback, you can't complain if you're using the "wrong" expander for the caliber.

Also, I think there has traditionally been some stubbornness in the community, itself. I remember when I was still excited about my "discovery." I tried to spread the gospel, but a lot of respected reloaders called it horse manure. They had long ago found that higher tin percentage and/or water-dropping/hardening improved* their cast 9mm endeavors, and they incorrectly attributed this to the twist rate rather than case-swaging. Also, at that time, PC was all the rage. So for every post I made about this expander thing, there would be 20 people saying that PC was the "real" solution.

There's also some plain crazy talk. Some people have claimed that Glock bores are incompatible. Even if the bore looks clean, they claim there's an invisible microscopic build-up of lead fouling that will undoubtedly at some point make the gun spontaneously explode. If they seen what my bore used to look like while shooting cast bullets, they would know a Glock bore can handle about a million times more lead fouling than that! Even before I had ever touched or had seen a bare cast bullet in my life and before I started reloading, I have had some gross, visible buildup of copper and lead fouling in my 45ACP Glock bore that you could see and scrape at... from shooting factory ammo with copper "jacketed" bullets that turned out to be copper plated/washed. This was hard fouling that took some creative problem-solving to remove.

*Harder bullets can reduce or eliminate case-swaging. But they are more expensive. And they tend to leave fouling, sometimes called antimony wash. If you want to shoot cast bullets in 9mm with no fouling, a softer bullet is the best bet. And I put all my money on a Glock bore vs any cut-rifled bore!


Added: just came across this in another thread. This illustrates the other extreme when it comes to opinions on expander size (the context was for jacketed bullets... I hope). I think hell might freeze over before manufacturers of reloading equipment would start catering to these crazy new-age cast bullet reloaders like P Flados and me. Well, not exactly new age... Every now and again, some old-timer comes along and states the things Flados and I do are old hat and known since 1960. I guess it's just something that has never been fully accepted or reached a unified consensus due to concerns over safety/setback.

What I found out many years ago was that the re-expanding plug diameters varied greatly between the many different brands of dies of the same caliber. So, I modified all my dies so that the expanding plug diameter slipped into a sized case without resistance and only allowed the case-mouth to be flaired slightly to ease bullet insertion. The bullet then re-expanded the case, for the maximum case grip on the bullet, and followed that with a case mouth crimp.

[nueces5]

All right. I was trying some tests, taking the advice I was receiving. I put the sizing die on my single station press. In the first station of the dillon I put an expander of 38/357 and then I made my longest bullet.
First station: Sizing
Second station (first in the dillon 550): expand and flare
Third station (second in D.550): It was already expanded so he just put powder on it.
Fourth station (Third of the Dillon): Seater
Fifth station (Fourth in the Dillon): Factory crimp.

Result: .3535 (put here the curse you use)

I repeat the whole process just by removing the Factory crimp and magically it became light. The dummies started coming out at 356. Plunk test satisfactory.
I'm in love like a teen.
Tomorrow I do the tests

[Buck Butcher]

Nueces5, I forgot to mention the factory crimp! I knocked out the carbide sizing ring of mine. It cannot swage the bollit down now. I still use it in the last station, just without the carbide ring.

[nueces5]

Nueces5, I forgot to mention the factory crimp! I knocked out the carbide sizing ring of mine. It cannot swage the bollit down now. I still use it in the last station, just without the carbide ring.

I took it out
Question: what function does it do without the carbide ring?

[sigep1764]

Takes the bell off the case created with your expanding die in station 1. This should allow the assembled cartridge to chamber without issue.

The carbide ring can in some instances squeeze the loaded boolit down to a smaller diameter. Some folks have issues with it, others do not.

[P Flados]

In past posts, I have tried to make it clear that after seating the bullet, I do a separate final step to "remove the flare".

I never use the word "crimp" unless I am actually reducing the diameter at the case mouth to something smaller than lower down.

With my bullets, tools and methods, I do not need any "crimp" to keep 9 mm bullets secure.

Half way through my struggles with the 9mm, I became convinced that something was reducing the size of my bullets during the loading process. I did every thing I could to "fix" things that might be the cause.

It sounds like Nueces5 is on track. He understands the problem. He is doing the right things to find the loading steps that are the cause of the problem.

[nueces5]

Hello everyone, today I shot the new boolits and I have to say that they have taken me the right way.
Groups of shots from 4 Inch to 17 meters. It's more than I can ask for. Only a little leading, which I hope with the PC is eliminated.
Thanks to everyone, especially Dusty for the patience and the desire to share knowledge.

[Buck Butcher]

Glad to hear it, feels great to get it right!

Good job,
Mark

[sigep1764]

Good job buddy!

[gloob]

Yes, good job. It's good to hear things are working out.

I got my Glock shooting really well with 356 cast. But to get that last bit of perfection, I load 358. Since discovering MBC, I don't cast for handguns much anymore, if at all. My 9mm Glocks have been eating MBC Cowboy #2, .358" 125 grain flat nose for the last several years. My Glocks will eat them at 1.116", but one of my friend's (the 5" barrel one, the 34?) needs them a bit shorter. The crimp groove on this bullet is completely exposed at this OAL. I haven't cleaned my 9mm Glock bores since I developed this load. Been over a thousand rounds, and all I do it run a patch after each outing to make sure I haven't screwed anything up.

[nueces5]

Dillon:
"We load lots of the polymer coated lead bullets and don’t have any shaving issues at all. We flare the case mouth more than we do for jacketed bullets. We suggest flaring at least .020 inch larger than a sized, unflared case mouth measures.



Thank you!"

Lap the mould and PC, is what I'm going to do, thanks

[Ginnedup]

Glocks do not have a fully supported chamber. If you load hot/fast rounds they can bulge/blow out (in a half moon shape) just forward of the extractor groove on the bottom of the case. This area is where the feed ramp is and not fully supporting the chamber. Be careful and check your cases for the bulge!

What is the difference between factory ammo that is fired from an unsupported chamber or a handload of same dimensions/ boolit weight? Hand loaded ammunition is virtually the same as factory ammo except for cost if assembled correctly.

[P Flados]

Some guns have a small feed ramp at the back of the chamber.

For any gun with a locked breach, I have a hard time seeing normal loads being a problem as long as the depth of the removed metal for the feed ramp is no more than just longer than the length of the primer. This "unsupported region" of a 9mm case never expands unless there is a gross overload. Note that this region is down so low that it does not get touched by the sizing die. If this region was expanding with normal loads, "normal" reloading would not address this expansion and primer pockets would get oversized fast.

If the feed ramp region extends much further into the chamber, you can have some actual "unsupported" case wall. I have heard of this in other caliber handguns, but do not think it is true for most 9mm handguns. I have picked fired 9mm brass that had the "guppy belly" bulge. I assumed it was from a loose chambered and/or blowback carbine.

If anyone has loads that routinely loosen the primer pockets on a 9mm, they are asking for a heap of trouble anyway.

[gloob]

We suggest flaring at least .020 inch larger than a sized, unflared case mouth measures.

Thanks for sharing this comedic gold. Well, it might be in the right ball park, but it's not a particularly useful way to measure.... from the outside, which is not the important part. Doesn't account for the thickness of the brass. And it relies on the specific size die in question, which can vary by more than a few thousandths die to die. And no one sells expander plugs by the OD of the brass after expanding.

For reference, I measured the mouth of one of my sized cases at average of 0.3725" OD. And after flaring with a step of 362 on my expander, the OD is 0.3785. That's only 6 thousandths, not twenty. A bell flare might have to be a bit bigger, perhaps. If you extrapolate from my measurements, the 358 portion of the expander is ultimately moving the brass roughly 2 thousandths.* So imagine what the standard 353 expander plug does to the case, other than flaring the mouth?

*Reading this back, I had to go back and try this. I sized another case, and it came out to the same 0.3725". After expanding short of the step flare, the case mouth measured 0.3765. So I measure a change of ~4 thousandths. The brass gets thicker, the deeper you go, of course. But take .358" minus 4 thous... And you still have to subtract another thousandth to get the diameter of the standard 9mm expander.