9mm 147 gr fn shaving lead

[Goober5263]

More usually, when the bullet engraves into the leade, the bullet locks in place and won't come back out without a fight. If they shave lead when chambering, but they don't seize and lock in there? I suspect your G3C barrel has 2 things going on.

The leade is very sharp/abrupt, and the freebore is a bit generous to allow enough room for the shavings without locking up the bullet.

You can probably try a larger size bullet, say 357 or 358 to fill up the freebore a little better. But to avoid cutting into the leade, you probably want to try new bullet/mold that is shorter. Because my crystal ball says you don't want to pay a smith to extend your freebore and/or taper the leade, since you bought a G3C and want to reload lead bullets.

If you want to do some shadetree smithing, there are a variety of ways to taper a sharp leade. That might buy you a little bit of OAL. But you won't be able to increase the freebore by much, short of using proper reamer.

So, here is what I have determined so far; the bullet as sized at .356 will function properly as long as I keep the shoulder of the bullet from protruding from the case mouth at all. That means my OAL is around 1.035-1.040. That also means that I am getting a bit of a compressed load using AA #7 @ 5.5 grains. Also, because I am using range brass, some loads will not in fact seat deep enough. I have tried backing the charge back to 5.0 grains with AA #7 and still have some cases that won't seat deep enough. I switched to Unique @ 3.0 grains and because that gives about the same volume in the case and I still have the same problem. Backed Unique off to 2.8 and now have failure to cycle, so done for now.

Bottom line for now...I think that my choice of bullet style is my main problem. Yes, tapering the leade might give me a bit more room (might try that at some point), but for now I am going to shop for a smaller bullet. I have been a handloader for about 40 years now, but have never really dabbled with casting my own other than some for my .38 spec and .44 mag so this is going to be fun!

I really, really appreciate all the great thoughts and advice given here and I look forward to learning from you all!

[405grain]

The other posters were thinking more clearly than I was - do your plunk testing with dummy rounds. It's way safer that way. Also, for selecting a bullet mold, you can choose whatever design that you desire, but keep in mind that for autoloading pistols round nose bullets have historically feed the best. They may not have the best performance parameters, like expansion or shock transfer, but cast bullets shaped like their round nosed FMJ counterparts 'usually' feed well.

[trapper9260]

The other posters were thinking more clearly than I was - do your plunk testing with dummy rounds. It's way safer that way. Also, for selecting a bullet mold, you can choose whatever design that you desire, but keep in mind that for autoloading pistols round nose bullets have historically feed the best. They may not have the best performance parameters, like expansion or shock transfer, but cast bullets shaped like their round nosed FMJ counterparts 'usually' feed well.

You give some good points , I shoot 147 gr FN in my semi auto and feeds well. But like you said need to watch what ones will feed for your gun.

[jsizemore]

I remove the barrel from the gun to do the plunk test. With the chamber up, you should be able to drop the loaded cartridge into the chamber and it seats fully so that the rear of the cartridge is flush or slightly below the hood of the barrel. You should hear the "plunk" as it drops in fully. The second part of the test is to turn the barrel over and the cartridge should free fall into you hand with no shake or using your finger to remove it. If you use mixed headstamp brass, you may have to adjust your seating/crimp to make your thickest case wall brass work.

Most heavier weight bullet are longer and the base of the bullet may be making contact with the start of the web taper in the head of your brass. You may be able to find a bevel base (BB) mold design that will accommodate your brass with a heavy weight bullet design. Some folks have to make major with their 9mm's and have to shoot the heavy weights. I shoot a 115 gr truncated cone design since all I do is shoot in the backyard. The shoulder of the bullet driving band is barely visible out of the case mouth. I save on lead and powder. If I feel the need for a heavier bullet downrange, I pull out the 45acp.

[wv109323]

I have experienced his problem and there is no solution except to have the barrel throated ( if that is possible). I have 2 Canik and 2 CZ pistols. There is no leade in the barrels and an oversized bullet(.356") will scrape lead or powder coating off the bullet and it only takes 8-10 rounds before the material accumulates at the front of the chamber and will not allow the slide to go into full battery.
I have tried all variations of bullet sizing,weights, and COL with 3 different bullet molds with no success. I have tried multiple aftermarket coated boolits to boot.To get a round to pass the plunk test it must be 1.050 or less. You get the boolit so deep in the case that the brass starts to deform the boolit base to a smaller diameter.
I had one of the CZ throated and the problem went away. The Caniks can not be easily throated because of the barrel hardening process.
My solution was to buy J-word bullets. It seems that the European and foreign manufacturers dimension their chambers for jacketed bullets only. I am going to try .355 boolits before I give up.

[BD]

I use the accurate 147 grain RNFP in my Sig P365. I powder coat them, size to .358 and seat them to 1.145. They feed very well and are as accurate as I can shoot, (+/- 1/2" at 25 yards if I'm seated at a bench with my elbows braced), no way I can match that accuracy offhand with that tiny pistol. This bullet does not have a leading edge on the front drive band, it tapers smoothly to the meplat. So I think this is all about the chamber and throat of your particular gun. In the OP's case wv109323 is probably has it nailed.

As an aside. I believe it is incorrect to ever say that any autoloading straight wall cartridge does not need a crimp. Even though the cartridge headspaces on the case mouth its is important that the taper crimp embeds the mouth of the case slightly so that the bullet cannot be setback upon chambering. This has been the industry standard for many years. Unless you plan to use only one bullet design, and one batch of a single head stamp of brass, you cannot expect that case neck tension alone will prevent bullet setback in any auto loading cartridge that headspaces on the mouth. I have seen the results of this more than once, and it's never pretty. Safety and reliability trump any advantage gained by not using a taper crimp correctly. This is very difficult to do in a single operation as it limits the COAL to a pretty narrow range for any particular bullet. It is a far better solution to seat and crimp in separate steps so the COAL can be adjusted to what the gun needs and the crimp can be adjusted correctly without the two parameters interfering with each other.