9x19 Lee 356-125-2R powder coated

[Willbird]

Starting a new thread here to detail some information on this project.

Pistol is an XD MOD.2 9x19 with 3" barrel.

First try was to just case the Lee bullets from 50-50 COWW and and indoor range scrap, powder coat with Smoke's bacon grease baked at 450F in convection toaster oven for 25 minutes and air cooled. Loaded some rounds on an Dillon RL550B using Dillon dies.

Results were dismal...bullets keyholing and minute of Volkswagon accuracy at 25 yards.

Pulled a seated bullet and discovered that the Dillon .353 expander plug leaving case mouths about .351 ID was causing the bullet to be swaged down to .353 on the base band when seating bullets.

[Willbird]

From there I focused more on whether things I tried still leaded the bore and throat, thinking if it was still leading it was not going to shoot worth a darn .

Tried water dropping bullets right out of the PC oven, no help.

Tried an off the shelf Lyman M die in station 1 of the press, the expander measures .356...firing rounds to check for leading showed an improvement.

Went ahead and made up a .358 plug and that looks really promising, the first 16 rounds fired to look at barrel condition looked great, fired a second 16 rounds on paper. Still bullets water dropped from the PC oven sized .358



I have a hammer type bullet puller and a .357 push through sizer coming, next steps will be to seat and pull some bullets both air cooled and water dropped and ensure they are not getting swaged down while seating.

I did re chamber the same round 10 times and measure to ensure there was no bullet setback. Once I settle on something that works decent I will do that test again with randomized brass and make sure it hold true with all of my mixed brass.

Overall I wonder how many people using Blue machines have tried cast bullets, or even plated bullets once and said "these suck" due to the bullets getting swaged down when being seated.

As to accuracy there are a few called fliers there, this is not a target pistol and I have not been a target shooter for a long long time . The best groups to date I have gotten with the gun are with Black Hills +p 9mm loads, around 4" at 25 yards for 16 rounds.

I did slug the bore too and got .3555-.3560

Bill

[Conditor22]

It's not just the expander plug, the 9MM has a tapered case and is frequently over-crimped which also down-sizes the boolit.

What is the actual measurement of the Dillon .353 expander plug?

[Willbird]

It's not just the expander plug, the 9MM has a tapered case and is frequently over-crimped which also down-sizes the boolit.

What is the actual measurement of the Dillon .353 expander plug?

.3530" is what my Dillon "9mm" expander plug measures.

There may be more to it than I have laid out here, but an "expanded" case that is .351 inside diameter at the mouth after expansion is not headed towards a good outcome . That was the outcome with my brass and the Dillon expander. I use gage pins to measure stuff like that too.

I am just crimping enough to remove the flare.

Tried 16 rounds with PC then air cooled bullets, results not as good as the water dropped after PC. Once I have a puller I will seat then pull both water dropped and air cooled and see if either is still being sized smaller by being seated in the case.

Here is a screen cap of some CAD work I did to see where the Dillon expander ends up, IE was it going deep enough into the case, and it appears that it is. The bullet nose profile is simplified but the base is in the proper place in the drawing.



To setup the M die depth I ran it down to touch then measured how much deeper I wanted to go.

If it all works out (and it seems to be headed a good direction) I will make up, harden, and polish a dillon style expander the proper dia.


Bill

[Willbird]

A quick google will reveal that this is not a new problem, one poster in this thread found that his "E" Powder funnel for 45 acp was .4460" dia . The end result will probably be a case mouth that is .444" (if the full length die sizes the case that much) and a .452 bullet getting shoved in there.

https://forums.brianenos.com/topic/1...nel-too-small/

[Willbird]

This is where you end up with a stock Dillon 9mm powder funnel (measures .353" as Dillon intends it to) and an air cooled powder coated bullet . 25 yards.

[Petander]

I did re chamber the same round 10 times and measure to ensure there was no bullet setback. Once I settle on something that works decent I will do that test again with randomized brass and make sure it hold true with all of my mixed brass.



Bill

I have loaded 9mm on and off for 20 years now. Mostly because commercial subsonic ammo is not subsonic in carbine length barrels.

Mixed,random brass gives mixed,random ammo to me. I find 9mm extremely sensitive and delicate to load for accuracy. Cast is even more of a challenge.

I'd try sorting the brass first.

[Conditor22]

military and some other cases have thicker walls

Do you have bigger M dies?

I've been using the NOE 356-360 successfully, I only expand the depth of the drive bands and use a Lee powder through die to flare the case mouth.

My friend got a 1 hole group at Apr 35 yards from the last Incremental load development method test I sent him.

[Willbird]

military and some other cases have thicker walls

Do you have bigger M dies?

I've been using the NOE 356-360 successfully, I only expand the depth of the drive bands and use a Lee powder through die to flare the case mouth.

My friend got a 1 hole group at Apr 35 yards from the last Incremental load development method test I sent him.

I have a lathe and a variety of types of tool and ordinary steel .

Your end result is close to where I am now but honestly if I still see bullets being sized by the seating process using the .358 I will make and try a .359.

The NOE plugs are the best thing going for the person who does not have a lathe IMHO.

As to sorting brass, no doubt it will improve things...ideally I'll get a batch of brass all the same lot and headstamp for picky stuff. The normal brass sources can supply that. Even new brass is not terrible, Midsouth has GBW for 89 per K.

I want to shoot some local USPSA matches and my goal is to create ammo for practice on the home range, at .15 a round federal factory ammo is cheap enough for matches, but much of the practice will not demand match accuracy, but the bullets DO need to go point forwards and not keyhole and lead the barrel .

A few years back I headed this same direction with 45 acp, right to the RL550B....and saw many of the same issues...poor accuracy and nearly every powder/bullet combination causing at least some leading. I got side tracked and never solved those issues....willing to bet that the Dillon 45 acp powder funnel is really small dia too, and same issues were happening.

I was kind of spoiled with a Star loader (actually a Phelps) that as they set it up from the factory made ammo that shot really good with cast or swaged lead alloy bullets. Replaced it with the Dillon because tooling is cheaper and more readily avail.

[res45]

Interesting thread, I recently picked up the Lee .356 125 gr. RN mold and cast up around 300 bullets to do some testing with. I was presently surprised that the bullet dropped at .358" using my standard 50/50 Lead/wheel weight alloy and after powder coating with Smokes Carolina Blue I could easily size them to .357" in my Lee push through sizer, which is the diameter my pistol likes. I haven't loaded or fired any of these bullets as of yet, life has been kinda busy.

My previous experience using a NOE 124 gr. SWC cast with the same alloy and sized to .357" using mixed brass and Power Pistol yielded excellent result in my Canik TP9SA that will shoot as accurate as you can hold it. I'm using standard Lee 9 mm dies without the FCD. I'll have to take some measurements of the Lee expander and case dimension but evidently it's not causing any issues. I use the same type Lee dies, Lee molds, alloy and powder in my 45 ACP as well with equal results, I'll have to post some target pics when I get out to the range of my results with the Lee 125 gr. RN bullet.

[Willbird]

I have never had any issues with the standard Lee dies, IMHO they follow the century old conventions as far as expander dia goes.

I remember folks getting into H110/WW296 powders in 44 and 357 magnum and the group already successful sharing that to get good results they polished their expander button down so the loaded rounds looked like "a snake swallowing an egg". Typically those days folks were using really hard cast bullets tho...and brass in those calibers does not as quickly taper in wall thickness...and at high pressure stuff may bump back up in the cyl throats too.

Mine are dropping around .358 after PC as well. One nice thing about using a push through is it alerts you if a bullet did not fill out well and ended up undersize.

I bought a Lee .356 push through but the bullets end up .3555". I had the .358 and will add a .357 which will give me options for other projects.

Once I can seat the bullets of different sizes without swaging them down then I can get an idea what dia exactly works best, the .3555" out of the .356 may work fine, we will see

Bill

[Willbird]

From what I am seeing honestly had I started out load workup on single stage with Lee or any other dies I would have seen decent results first try. Typically normal dies the expander plug is about bullet dia. Then I would have went to the RL550B with the same load and said "hmm" when it worked poorly.

Bill

[Willbird]

Sorted brass, excellent suggestion .

Fired one 16 round group with the last combination, sorting brass helped some I think.

made up a .359 M plug, using Starline brass that leaves a .356 ID for the .358 bullets.
Loaded 16 rounds, did re chamber check on 1 round, half a dozen times through the gun the bullet moved .000 .

Had at least one round that was called really bad when the trigger broke, overall I think the central clustering is a lot better .



Bill

[fredj338]

I run 0.357" in all my 9mm. My setup is a 650 with an old RCBS die set & separate taper crimp with a MBF powder thru expander, like the M die. I have never had a bullet tumble or Key hole in any of my 9mm, even stock glock bbls. I have that same Lee mold & never got terrific accuracy with that bullet design. I feel there is too much weight forward for good stability, fwiw. My go to is a Saeco 147gr RN for general or a Saeco 124gr TC.

[Willbird]

I run 0.357" in all my 9mm. My setup is a 650 with an old RCBS die set & separate taper crimp with a MBF powder thru expander, like the M die. I have never had a bullet tumble or Key hole in any of my 9mm, even stock glock bbls. I have that same Lee mold & never got terrific accuracy with that bullet design. I feel there is too much weight forward for good stability, fwiw. My go to is a Saeco 147gr RN for general or a Saeco 124gr TC.

Accurate molds has some nice looking no grease groove designs that are tempting.

I’m getting the urge to carefully setup the mold and remove the grease groove by boring in the Bridgeport with a single point boring tool. That would add a little rear weight .

The Mr Bullet feeder funnel does look nicely made for the price. I’d pay prefer a shorter section right before the flare, it is needed by the bullet feeder apparently ?

Their design does confirm that I need not machine the big undercut Dillon uses near the top end, I could not see any function for it except a place to stamp the letter that denotes what caliber the funnel is.

[Willbird]

This one right here from Accurate looks nice.

http://www.accuratemolds.com/bullet_...=35-130M-D.png

My belief has always been that using bullets all from one mold cavity should be the most accurate.

But the 6 cavity Lee might drop bullets every bit good enough to practice basic work from the holster for a beginner like me in that dept .

Bill

[Willbird]

I am going to order the Lee 356-120-TC mold, many others have had great results with it...the $40 6 cavity option is always attractive if it works well .

Still going forwards with seating-pulling-measuring tests with various case neck inside dia to see what is going on there.

Bill

[Camper64]

Here are some of my targets using the molds your talking about. These were shot using a rest at 10 yards. Next trip out I'll be moving back to 25 yards. All sized to .356 Gun used was Smith & Wesson SD9VE

[AR-Bossman]

Keeping an eye on this as I'm about a day or so away from PC'ing my 125-2R bullets.. or boolits I guess. I get all nervous when I read someone is having problems with their's. I wonder if I wasted my money on the mold, but at least I could always just re-melt the ones I poured.

[Conditor22]

Millions of 356-125 2R have been cast, coated, loaded and shot. (I've been responsible for several thousand of the number