.40 S&W (yet another caliber)

[cwlongshot]

Its not TOO hard but its a waste of hard alloy.

Shoot for HALF THAT!! 10 is FINE in tens of thousands of 40's and -0's I have sent into plates.


CW

[44Blam]

Sure enough! Another question was BHN but there is a lot of references on here about that, looks like straight COWW. Tested one of my ingots and it's around 20. I powder coat everything so don't know if this is too hard.

Wow, I might take that alloy and mix it with soft lead to get something in the 12-15 bhn range and stretch it out a little...

[Dieselhorses]

Wow, I might take that alloy and mix it with soft lead to get something in the 12-15 bhn range and stretch it out a little...

I ended up doing that.

[sargenv]

My usual alloy for 40 S&W is 95-3-2 (ish). I've loaded 40 S&W with bullets as light as 140 and as heavy as 220's. I've loaded it in a several pistols and a couple of revolvers.

I've loaded the 140 gr Bullets to 1350 fps for a dandy major pistol load and 220's to about 590 fps for a mouse fart single stack load. I've used Titegroup, Sport Pistol, Bullseye, 231, Solo 1000 (I still have some), Ramshot Competition, SW-Ultimate Pistol, SW-Auto Pistol, Red Dot, Green Dot, Power Pistol, Herco, Blue Dot, Longshot (Blasty as heck), Accurate #7, Vitt N320, Clays, Universal, Clay Dot, and likely a few more that I can't recall at the moment.

My current favorite full power load is with Shooter's World Ultimate Pistol. 5.8 gr with a Rem 5 1/2 SPP and 180 gr Jacketed Flat Points.

I've loaded 140, 155, 180, and 200 gr Bear creek Moly coated bullets. I've also loaded 155 gr JHP, 165 and 180 JFP, 180, 200, and 220 Plated X-Tremes, and also 160, 175, 180, 185, and 200 Gr Cast. The 185 was a mold I had LBT make for me that is a long round nose. I was looking for a faster reloading RN bullet than what was available at the time. I think the 160 RN & 200 TC were from a group buy on here. I also got in on the "pointy boolit" group buy and have I think 121 and 170 ish pointy molds. The 175 is the Lee TC that was available as a 6 cavity.

I've been very busy over the years loading 40.. I think it's sort of my favorite non magnum pistol round since I have so many different platforms for firing it.

My favorite revolver load for ICORE was 4.0 gr of Ramshot Competition with a 140 Bear creek RN, Nickel plated brass, and Federal #100 SPP. I'd use Fed #200 SP Mag if the 100's were hard to find and they always lit off as good as the 100's with not much more pop.

[Lloyd Smale]

Want my take on it? Harder is allways better in a good gun. Soft shooting better came from the 50s and 60s when gunmakers didn't worry to much about accuracy and chamber and barrel dimensions were all over the place and a bullet need to be made like bubble gun to bump up to give 3 inch groups instead of 10 inch. Take a good revolver or a semi auto which most times have shallow rifling and harder will always shoot better then soft. If that wasn't true why would we use jacketed accuracy as our measuring stick. Copper is harder then any lead alloy. Now this all depends on what you want. If I was just rolling beer cans at 15 yards I wouldn't waste my 20 bhn alloy on that. WW is plenty good for that. but if I was competing in a ppc or bullseye match where a 1/4 inch difference in 25 yard groups might mean the difference between coming in first or coming in last Id use a hard of an alloy as I could afford. Back when lineotype was easy to find and cheap that's what I used for my comp bullets. As it got harder and harder to find I used 5050 ww/lino which comes in at 17-18. Or when the linotype stash gets to small I just water drop ww. Pc will allow you to shoot pure at magnum velocitys without leading but it wont stop your bullet from deforming and your groups to look like they were shot with a shotgun using buckshot. Me? If I had some 20bhn alloy and was casting 40s and wanted great accuracy and wanted to save money (which is why we all cast) id probably cut that 20 bhn 5050 with ww or even 25 percent of your 20 bhn alloy with 75 percent ww. Really anymore id probably squirrel the 20bhn away for rifle shooting and use straight ww for my pistol bullets but wouldn't go any softer then that.

Sure enough! Another question was BHN but there is a lot of references on here about that, looks like straight COWW. Tested one of my ingots and it's around 20. I powder coat everything so don't know if this is too hard.

[leeggen]

Several years back Geargnasher wrote a very good article as to loading for the 40 cal. If you will go to that article ( do a search of his post) you will learn exactly what you are looking for. Gear I have that acticle printed out and I still relate to it at times with each gun I load for. Seems to fit most but he wrote it strictly about the 40
CD

[Dieselhorses]

Want my take on it? Harder is allways better in a good gun. Soft shooting better came from the 50s and 60s when gunmakers didn't worry to much about accuracy and chamber and barrel dimensions were all over the place and a bullet need to be made like bubble gun to bump up to give 3 inch groups instead of 10 inch. Take a good revolver or a semi auto which most times have shallow rifling and harder will always shoot better then soft. If that wasn't true why would we use jacketed accuracy as our measuring stick. Copper is harder then any lead alloy. Now this all depends on what you want. If I was just rolling beer cans at 15 yards I wouldn't waste my 20 bhn alloy on that. WW is plenty good for that. but if I was competing in a ppc or bullseye match where a 1/4 inch difference in 25 yard groups might mean the difference between coming in first or coming in last Id use a hard of an alloy as I could afford. Back when lineotype was easy to find and cheap that's what I used for my comp bullets. As it got harder and harder to find I used 5050 ww/lino which comes in at 17-18. Or when the linotype stash gets to small I just water drop ww. Pc will allow you to shoot pure at magnum velocitys without leading but it wont stop your bullet from deforming and your groups to look like they were shot with a shotgun using buckshot. Me? If I had some 20bhn alloy and was casting 40s and wanted great accuracy and wanted to save money (which is why we all cast) id probably cut that 20 bhn 5050 with ww or even 25 percent of your 20 bhn alloy with 75 percent ww. Really anymore id probably squirrel the 20bhn away for rifle shooting and use straight ww for my pistol bullets but wouldn't go any softer then that.

Alright well I mixed 2/3 of pot of 20 BHN with 1/3 pot of 10 BHN. Cast some bullets almost 2 weeks ago (water quenched which I probably shouldn't have) and tested hardness today-12 BHN. I guess my mind is fried or something because I can't generate a formula at the moment. Issue now is I'm out of pure lead and I need to start sorting some more wheel weights. Thanks much for the info!

[Dieselhorses]

Several years back Geargnasher wrote a very good article as to loading for the 40 cal. If you will go to that article ( do a search of his post) you will learn exactly what you are looking for. Gear I have that acticle printed out and I still relate to it at times with each gun I load for. Seems to fit most but he wrote it strictly about the 40
CD

Will search for that.

[bayjoe]

I use 5.2 gr of Unique in the winter and 4.7 gr. of 700X in the summer. 700X smokes terrible and it is great at keeping mosquitos away

[Lloyd Smale]

I don't understand how you could mix 2/3s 20 bhn and 1/3 10 and water drop them and come out with 12bhn. You should be around 17 bhn just air cooling. Id guess mid 20s water dropped.

Alright well I mixed 2/3 of pot of 20 BHN with 1/3 pot of 10 BHN. Cast some bullets almost 2 weeks ago (water quenched which I probably shouldn't have) and tested hardness today-12 BHN. I guess my mind is fried or something because I can't generate a formula at the moment. Issue now is I'm out of pure lead and I need to start sorting some more wheel weights. Thanks much for the info!

[Dieselhorses]

I don't understand how you could mix 2/3s 20 bhn and 1/3 10 and water drop them and come out with 12bhn. You should be around 17 bhn just air cooling. Id guess mid 20s water dropped.

Don't know. I checked the ingots I used for hardness, checked hardness of bullets. I used the old style way of checking hardness so I could be mistaken. (5/32 ball rod at 60 lbs. for 30 seconds, then measure indentation and compare to chart). I ordered an official tester though. Just gonna go with 12 BHN.

[Lloyd Smale]

I have a cabin tree tester. In my opinion the best one. Ive had lbt's and saecos and the cabin tree is the most repeatable. That said I don't put much store in the number I get from testing. I use it more to compare different alloys or test unknown lead they anything.

[georgerkahn]

I have a cabin tree tester. In my opinion the best one. Ive had lbt's and saecos and the cabin tree is the most repeatable. That said I don't put much store in the number I get from testing. I use it more to compare different alloys or test unknown lead they anything.

I concur 100% with this. When I first "became aware" of the hardness question in my boolits, I had to have a tester; then a second; then, a third... In the past decade or so, I pretty much solely use the Cabine one -- and that primarily as a "comparison tool" to ascertain similarity/difference with boolits which work.
geo

[Lloyd Smale]

yup George. I kind of chuckle at those who claim there alloy is 15bhn when in fact with the testers we have access to it could be 13 and it could be 18. If you doubt it I had all three. A Seaco, lbt and cabin tree. Test the same alloy with all three and you got three totally different readings. Even testing the same batch with the lbt or Seaco would get you a different reading about every time you tested. Especially the lbt.